',^ 'V'v 




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DIVINE OVERRULING 

W. SANDAY, D.D., F.B.A. 



By W. SANDAY, P.P. 

IN THE INTERNATIONAL CRITICAL COMMENTARY 
In post 8vo (pp. 562) price, 14s. net. 

ROMANS 

By WILLIAM SANDAY, D.D., LL.D. 

LAD'- MARGARET PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY AND CANON OF 
CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD, 



ARTHUR C. HEADLAM, D D. 

LATE PRINCIPAL OF KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON 

Principal F. H. Chase, D.D., Cambridge, says: 'We welcome it as 
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In post 8vo, price 7s. net. 

OUTLINES OF 
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DIVINE 



OV E R R U L I N G 



BY 






W; SANDAY, D.D., F.B.A 



Edinburgh : T. & T. CLARK, 38 George Street 

1920 



^ 



.v^'^ 



5^ 



2i> 



TO MY COLLEAGUES AT CHRIST CHURCH WHO 

IN SOMEWHAT DELICATE CIRCUMSTANCES 

HAVE ALWAYS BEEN THE KINDEST 

OF FRIENDS TO ME 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I. The Place of Comparative Religion in 

Theological Study . , . . i 

II. Natural and Revealed Religion . . 27 

III. On the Nature of Miracle . . -S3 

IV. Sermon on the Meaning of the Atone- 

ment 83 



PREFACE 

This book, such as It is, contains my last public 
utterances as Lady Margaret Professor. When I had 
no longer any doubt that the time had come when I 
ought to retire, I planned a short course of lectures 
which might perhaps be suitable to mark the close of 
the tenure of the chair as an Inaugural marks its begin- 
ning. It happened that I was also called upon to 
preach before the University in the regular course; 
and I have ventured to print this sermon along with 
the lectures. The four chapters which are thus formed 
were not exacdy designed in the first Instance as 
a continuous series. And yet, apart from the fact 
that they were all written at the same time, there 
Is a real thread of connexion between them. I have 
tried to express this in the common title under which 
I have grouped them. The underlying thought Is 
that not only the field of what we call special revela- 
tion but the whole process of religious evolution 
must be included in one great divine scheme, which 
has its human side of progressive experiment, but has 



viii Preface 

no less its divine side in which all the scattered 
imperfect and fluctuating efforts of man are co- 
ordinated into a single continuous and comprehensive 
whole, with subtle Invisible links between its various 
parts and stages. The third lecture develops (in 
a form which is partly apologetic) the point that it 
is a mistake to suppose that this divine element 
involves anything that is really arbitrary or irregular. 
The sermon may be taken to illustrate an application 
of the general idea in its bearing upon modern problems. 
It is reprinted here by kind permission of the editor 
of The Expositor. The frontispiece is from Erman's 
A gyptische Religion (1905), p. 71. 

W. SANDAY. 

Christ Church, 
Oxford. 



I 

THE PLACE OF COMPARATIVE 

RELIGION IN THEOLOGICAL 

STUDY 



I 

THE PLACE OF COMPARATIVE RELIGION 
IN THEOLOGICAL STUDY ^ 

The publication of Sir James G. Frazer's Folk-Lore 
in the Old Testament (Macmillan, 191 8) may be said 
to form something of a landmark in the history of 
theological study. We might call it perhaps the 
Coming of Age of that particular branch of the 
Theological Encyclopaedia which goes by the name 
of ' Comparative Religion '. 

Sir James Frazer is the leading representative 
among us of the literary study of Anthropology. He 
is a scholar and a man of letters ; and he has planned 
his work upon a large scale. He is not merely a 
collector of facts, but he marks that mature stage at 
which the collecting and digesting of facts has been 
reduced to a work of art. The three volumes of his 
latest undertaking amount to a corpus of materials on 
that side of Anthropology which brings it into the 
closest contact with Theology. 

When I speak of a corpus of material, I do not 
mean exactly to suggest that it is to be taken as 
authoritative, because there is a good deal in it that 
should rather be regarded as tentative ; nor can I by 

* This lecture was originally entitled 'Suggestions for a New 
Orientation of Theological Study '. 

B 2 



4 /. Place of Comparative Religion 

any means wholly admire the attitude to the subject 
which it represents. The great desideratum seems to 
me to be a closer study and definition of the relations 
in which the different data stand to each other, dis- 
tinguishing those in which there is a real connexion 
and affiliation from those in which there is only a vague 
analogy. It is chiefly as a record of progress that the 
book is impressive. 

I 

I wish I could give an idea how impressive. I shall 
not try to pile up details, and will confine myself for 
the most part to what has been done in these islands. 
But even within these limits it may be possible, by 
turning the facts about a little and looking at them 
in different lights, to convey some impression of the 
magnitude and rapidity of the advance that has been 
made in the last few years. 

(i) Let us think, first, of the amount of this 
comparative matter that has found its way into com- 
mentaries on the early books of the Bible. I believe 
Dr. Driver was the first to bring to bear systematically 
parallels to the early chapters of Genesis from the 
Assyrian and Babylonian records.^ This was in his 
commentary on Genesis, which came out in 1904. 
Then Dr. Skinner, Principal of Westminster College, 
Cambridge, has followed in his steps in his com- 

^ This is said strictly of commentaries. The first work to deal 
directly with the subject was, I believe, the second edition of Eber- 
hard Schrader's Keilinschriften u. d. A.T. (E.T. 1886). 



in Theological Study 5 

mentary on the same book with eminent sobriety and 
sound judgement. This appeared in 191 2. And then 
only yesterday Dr. Burney placed in our hands a com- 
mentary on Judges that hardly leaves a stone unturned 
in the way of all-round research and illustration. 

(2) Another test that can be applied is the test of 
the Schweich Lectures. Here again we begin with 
Dr. Driver and end with Dr. Burney. In 1908 
Dr. Driver opened the series by a survey of Modern 
Research as Illustrating the Bible. But in this con- 
nexion we are reminded of the special debt that is 
due to Dr. Leonard W. King of the British Museum. 
As, from our present point of view, the Book of Genesis 
is the most important in the Bible, so the double 
department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities has 
taken the lead in the field of research by excavation. 
And just in this field the strides in advance have been 
greatest. It is Dr. King more than any one else who 
has enabled us to keep pace with them. Of late the 
new material has come mainly from America, with the 
utilizing of the finds brought by the expedition of the 
University of Pennsylvania from the site of the ancient 
city of Nippur. The mention of these recalls the debt 
we are under to Dr. Morris Jastrow, Jr., whose books 
are so clear, so readable, and so aptly and copiously 
illustrated. I have in mind more particularly his 
Aspects of Religious Belief in Babylonia and Assyria 
(i 9 1 1), and Civilization of Babylonia and Assyria(igi 5). 
The new texts were published especially by Dr. Arno 
Poebel in 191 4. But in this country no one has done 



6 /. Place of Comparative Religion 

more to bring home the significance of these discoveries 
than Dr. Leonard W. King. We have only to follow his 
publications to see them as it were rising before our eyes. 
First there was the history of Sumer and A Mad (igio) ; 
then of Babylonia {191 5) ; and now, at the high-water 
mark of the subject, his Schweich Lectures on Legends 
of Babylon a7id Egypt, delivered in 191 6 and published 
last year. 

r wonder how far the extraordinary gains that have 
been marked by these researches have sunk into the 
general consciousness. We only have to compare the 
state of the data in respect to fullness and precision as 
they stood at the time of the publication of Siuner and 
Akkad, then five years later with Babylonia, and as 
they now stand in the Schweich Lectures. Is it quite 
realized that behind the Neo-Babylonian and Assyrian 
cultures there lie not only the culture of ancient 
Babylonia but the yet older civilization that is known 
as Sumerian ? For a time this was disputed ; but it is 
now firmly established. In the first place, the first 
Babylonian dynasty is now fixed with approximate 
exactness at the period 2225-1926, the great 
Hammurabi and his Code of Law occupying the years 
2 1 23-208 1 . Whereas, quite recently, we had a number 
of texts in Assyrian copies of the time of Ashur-banipal 
(the Greek Sardanapalus, 668-626), not only have we 
these texts carried back to the times of the Babylonian 
Hammurabi, but we also have them carried back still 
further into the Sumerian period, i. e. across the border 
of the fourth millennium b. c. 



in Theological Study 7 

In like manner as regards Egypt. I understand that 
the Palermo Stele is one of the earliest monuments of 
Egyptian history. It appears to have been drawn up 
during the Vth Dynasty, i.e. before the middle of the 
third millennium B.C. I orather that it can be inferred 
from this that from the beginning of the dynastic age 
onward a sort of yearly chronicle was kept of the 
leading acts of the reigning Pharaoh.^ The beginning 
of the * dynastic age' is placed by Dr. James H. 
Breasted, a trustworthy American scholar, about 3400. 
Dr. King tells us that five other fragments of the text 
of the Stele have now been published, which in the 
circumstances must be a discovery of great importance. 
Dr. King says that ' we can now trace the history of 
culture in the Nile Valley back, through an unbroken 
sequence, to its neolithic stage '.^ Both the history of 
Egypt and the history of Babylonia are now very sub- 
stantial quantities well on in the fourth millennium B.C. 
Does not that impress the imagination ? 

(3) But a still more effective way of bringing out the 
progress of knowledge is to take to pieces a book like 
Sir James Frazer's and resolve it into its component 
parts. It will give an additional zest to this if I point 
out by the way how much has been due to men of our 
own race, and how characteristic their several contribu- 
tions have been. The whole development has fallen 
well within the last fifty years. I have been witness of 
it myself. The landmarks are as follows. 

(i) In 1 87 1 Sir E. B. Tylor brought out his book 
* Schweich Lectures^ P» 23. ^ Ibidi, p. 22, 



8 1. Place of Comparative Reltgiort 

Primitive Culture, which struck out a new line. Sir 
Edward Tylor (knighted in 191 2) was an English 
country squire, of Quaker family, fond of travel and 
interested in primitive peoples, to whose manners and 
customs he devoted a great amout of sagacious study 
and observation. Lord Avebury (Sir John Lubbock), 
whose name was often mentioned along with his, was 
not quite a writer of the same calibre. But Andrew 
Lang, as a man of letters and so far also an amateur, 
gave efficient support and broke a doughty lance against 
Max Muller and his following, who were inclined to 
exaggerate the part played by mythology in the early 
history of Religion and to treat mythology too much as 
just a disease of language. 

(ii) Very different were the antecedents of William 
Robertson Smith. We may well ask if there was any 
greater academic figure in the last generation. There 
was none that had so much to do with scientific 
theology. His personal presence and magnetism 
fructified the leading minds in two universities ; and 
yet it is a happy thing that bodily presence is not needed 
to transmit an influence. We too had owx parnobile — 
in Dr. Cheyne and Dr. Driver, great scholars both ; 
one a genius as well as a scholar, and the other endowed 
with judgement equal to his scholarship. Robertson 
Smith's great work was done between 1875 and 1888 
while he was engaged on The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 
with that epoch-making book The Religion of the Semites 
added in 1 889. And it was Dr. Cheyne who stepped into 
his inheritance with Encyclopaedia Biblica (i 899-1 903). 



in Theological Shtdy 9 

(iii) It cannot be said that Professor Max Miiller 
was on the winning side in the more fundamental 
controversies in which he enoraored. His theories did 
not take hold, in spite of the attractive form in which 
they were put forward. 

And yet he left behind him one great achievement. 
It is to him that we owe the initiative of the great series 
oi Sacred Books of the East, which is now complete in 
fifty volumes. The first volume, I believe, appeared 
in 1875, the same date at which Robertson Smith was 
beginning his work on The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 
The undertaking was international ; it owed its incep- 
tion to the enthusiasm of Prof. Max Miiller, and its 
organization to the enterprise of the Clarendon Press. 

(iv) I observe that Sir James Frazer sketches the 
genealogy of his own studies in his new preface. 
He traces them to the French Protestant Pastor 
Samuel Bochart (i 599-1667), and in England a little 
later to Dr. John Spencer {1630-95), Master of Corpus 
Christi College, Cambridge, who laid the foundations 
of the science of Comparative Religion by his book 
on the ritual laws of the ancient Hebrews. After 
a lapse of two centuries this work was taken up again 
in Cambridge by William Robertson Smith, of whom 
Sir James speaks as his own 'revered master and friend'. 
It is his ambition to tread in the footsteps of these pre- 
decessors, and to carry on what he asks leave to call 
* the Cambridge tradition of Comparative Religion '. 

The claim made for Cambridge is perfectly just. At 
the same time I am not sorry to think that at the 



lo /. Place of Comparative Religion 

present moment, in spite of our severe losses in the too 
early deaths of Dr. Cheyne and Dr. Driver, our own 
Hebraists and Anthropologists are well able to hold 
their own, and we too have a tradition in our Pitt 
Rivers Museum. 

(v) On another side we can reach out a hand to 
Sir James Frazer. He might indeed seem to be 
following Sir E. B. Tylor, when I imagine that he is 
really treading in the footsteps of Robertson Smith. 
The work with which he made his own great reputation 
was The Golden Boughy which appeared in 1890. The 
more special field to which this belongs was the field of 
Classical Archaeology, to which he has also contributed 
his sumptuous edition of Pausanias. In this field he is 
joined by Dr. Percy Gardner and the Rector of Exeter 
(Dr. Farnell) whose Cults of the Greek States came out 
in five stately volumes in the years 1896- 1909. And 
what these scholars have done for Greece, Mr. Warde 
Fowler has done in equally finished and thorough style 
for Rome. 

(vi) I have already said that, from the Biblical — 
Old Testament — point of view, the most important 
field has been the Antiquities of Egypt and Babylonia. 
In this field we depend especially on the British Museum, 
where we are very glad to have Dr. L. W. King to 
speak for us,^ as he has done with great energy — 
especially in the last few years. Our own scholars are 
at the present time well abreast of these studies. 

^ This can, alas, no longer be said. Dr. King died on August 20 
of the present year at the early age of forty-nine — a truly grievous loss 



in Theological Shtdy ii 

Let us pause for a moment to look back at this 
mustering of forces — every one of substantial weight, 
I spoke of the ' Coming of Age ' of the comparative 
study of Religion. I need not say that it was only 
a figure of speech. We have seen that the space 
of time really covered has been a full fifty years. 
But there is no doubt about the Coming of Age. 

II 

(i) The problem of divers religions is not really new. 
Both in Biblical times and in Patristic times there were 
different ways of regarding foreign religions. Indeed 
opposite tendencies were at work. On the one hand 
there are those generous pictures of the mountain of 
the Lord's house exalted above the top of the mountains, 
and the peoples flocking to it.^ Zion becomes a rallying- 
point for the nations. There is not friction and 
antagonism, but a kind of willing acknowledgement by 
the heathen of the superiority of Israel's religion. This 
maybe in part a reflection of the proud self-consciousness 
of Israel's prophets — an Isaiah or a Micah — perhaps 
drawing upon an older prophecy still, and in any case 
unshaken in their firmness of triumphant conviction. 
The prophets of Israel do not stay to count chariots 
and horses. Weak and insignificant as Israel may be 
compared to the greater powers — inferior to Damascus, 
and much more to Assyria or the revived Babylonia, 
the prophets of Israel do not abate one jot of their 
claims. They speak as if their God were supreme over 
^ Isa. ii. 2-4 = Mic. iv. 1-3. 



12 /. Place of Comparative Religion 

heaven and earth and as if there was no resisting His 
will. Something we may believe is due to this confident 
faith projecting itself into the void. But there must 
also, we should think, have been some real objective 
foundation for the apparent recognition by the sur- 
rounding nations of something impressive in Israel's 
faith, and in Israel itself, what we might call perhaps 
the presence of a great soul in a small body. From 
time to time we see echoes of this. The returning 
exiles, more particularly, are carried along by a great 
enthusiasm. They dream of themselves as escorted 
back to their homes. 

' They shall bring thy sons in their bosom, and thy 
daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders. And 
kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and their queens 
thy nursing mothers : they shall bow down to thee with 
their faces to the earth, and lick the dust of thy feet ; 
and thou shalt know that I am the Lord, and they that 
wait for me shall not be ashamed.'^ 

Another striking passage, which can be dated about 

520-516 B.C., is Zechariah viii. 22-3 : 

' Yea, many peoples and strong nations shall come to 
seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem, and to intreat the 
favour of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord of hosts : 
In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall 
take hold, out of all the languages of the nations, shall 
even take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, 
We will go with you, for we have heard that God is 
with you.' 

This would be not more than about twenty years later 
than the passage just quoted. 

* Isa. xlix. 22-4. 



in Theological Stttdy 13 

And while there are these friendly and deferential 
relations, doubtless somewhat idealized, on the part of 
the heathen, so also we find remarkable advances on 
the part of the spiritual leaders of Israel. I wonder if 
Psalm Ixxxvii has all the effect that it deserves to have? 
Is it clearly understood what the picture is ? It is the 
psalm which is the original of 

Glorious things of thee are spoken, 
Zion, city of our God. 

But it is not only a glorification of Zion. The God of 
Zion is represented as holding a census of His citizens. 
They are being entered for registration in His book. 
God Himself is speaking : 

'I will make mention of Rahab (i.e. Egypt) and 
Babylon as among them that know me.' 

' Behold Philistia, and Tyre, with Ethiopia — this one 
was born there (i. e. the natives of Philistia and 
Tyre and Ethiopia are as if they had been born 
in Zion).' 

' And of Zion it shall be said, " Each and every one 
was born in her ; and he, the Most High, shall 
establish her".' 

The new citizens join in a festal procession. 

But I think that two of the most astonishing passages 
in the Old Testament are from Isaiah xix and from 
the prophet Malachi. The first is of quite uncertain 
date. When I read it I am reminded of the Sermon 
on the Mount, and * the Father in heaven ' who 'maketh 
His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth 
rain on the just and the unjust*. 

There is to be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria, 



14 /. Place of Comparative Religion 

and the Assyrian is to come into Egypt, and the 
Egyptian into Assyria ; and the Egyptians are to 
worship with the Assyrians. 

' In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt 
and with Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth : 
for that the Lord of hosts hath blessed them, saying, 
Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of 
my hands, and Israel mine inheritance.' ^ 

The passage in Malachi is different : but it too 
reminds us of the Sermon on the Mount. First a verse 
of rebuke : 

' Oh that there were one among you that would shut 
the doors, that ye might not kindle fire on mine altar 
in vain ! I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord of 
hosts, neither will I accept an offering at your hand/ 

Then the great verse, which is just a calm outlook on 
the heathen world. 

*For from the rising of the sun even unto the 
going down of the same my name is great among the 
Gentiles ; and in every place incense is offered unto my 
name, and a pure offering : for my name is great among 
the Gentiles, saith the Lord of hosts.' ^ 

The heathen worships are virtually worship of Jehovah, 
and their offerings are acceptable to Him. 

Compared to such passages as this, the almost con- 
temporary work of Ezra and Nehemiah seems conceived 

^ Isa. xix. 24, 25. See, however, Ch. Quart. Rev.^ July 1912, 
pp. 406-9. The view there expressed is attractive, and should 
supersede what is said in the text, both on this passage and on the 
next. The reference is probably not to Gentile religions but to 
scattered outgrowths of Judaism, like that revealed in the Elephantine 
papyri. "^ Mai. i. 10, 11. 



in Theological Study 15 

In a spirit of narrowness and exclusiveness, and the 
forced dissolution of marriages between the Jews and 
the surrounding peoples seems harsh and unfeeling. 
And yet there was reason for it. If things had gone 
on as they were going, the Jews would soon have lost 
the distinctiveness of their religion. We can also see 
that Ezra and Nehemiah were not only both of them 
men of much force of character but also of genuine and 
sincere piety. 

{2) We turn from the Old Testament to the New. 
And here again two passages seem to stand out as 
helpful to us. There may quite well be more ; but at 
the moment I think specially of two. 

One Is from the first chapter of Romans — a gloomy 
passage Indeed, but very instructive as to the position of 
the heathen, what they might have been and what they 
were. It Is Implied that the heathen mxight have drawn 
right inferences as to the character and attributes of God 
from what they could see In nature, and adapted their 
cults to these Inferences ; but they had not done so. 

Then there Is the lighter and more genial speech of 
St. Paul at Lystra, in which he explains how God had 
not left Himself without witness, but had given to all 
men rains and fruitful seasons, filling their hearts with 
food and gladness. 

These two passages between them might be said to 
be the charter of what Is called ' Natural Religion '. I 
hope, If all 's well, to have more to say on this subject 
In the next lecture. I will then refer to the sense In 
which the phrase Is used by Bishop Butler, and I will 



i6 /. Place of Comparative Religion 

also try to distinguish the change of meaning which it 
has to some extent undergone since his day. Perhaps 
I need not stay to enlarge on the special application of 
the two passages now. For our subject they are both 
important and valuable. 

(3) There was a conception of which special use was 
made by the second-century Apologists that may 
suggest some analogy of reasoning to ourselves. This 
is the idea, borrowed from the Stoics, of Aoyoy o-Trep/tan/c^y. 
Whatever there was in the world of right thought and 
right conduct was due to the presence and operation of 
scattered germs of Divine Reason. If Christians 
showed more of these it was because for them the 
Divine Reason was incarnate bodily in Christ. Among 
the heathen a like incarnation was partial. It was the 
mark of conspicuous virtue — as seen in the best of the 
pagan philosophers and poets.^ It was an amiable and 
open-minded doctrine, and it did credit both to the head 
and the heart of those who held it. 

On the other hand, the corruption of the truth was 
set down to the perverting influence of demons, 
who systematically travestied the details of Christian 
doctrine and Christian worship. A belief in the activity 
of demons was widespread throughout antiquity. It 
had played a large part both In Egyptian religion and in 
Babylonian. On both sides of the Christian era it was 
equally rife In Jewish and In pagan circles. From these 
It came to the Apologists ; and in their hands it is apt 
to seem to us petty and puerile. And yet the haunting 
^ Justin Martyr, Apol. ii. 7, 13. 



in Theological Study 17 

mystery of evil was always there ; and it could only find 
expression in the current forms. 

(4) There was a text in the Epistle to the Romans 
which easily lent itself to misapplication. We know how 
robust and yet how sensitive was the conscience of the 
apostle of the Gentiles. The intercourse of Christians 
and non-Christians left dangerous openings for casuistry. 
Only an honest and yet a free demeanour could keep 
the heart right and the judgement clear. This was the 
* faith ' which the apostle urged his disciple to keep to 
himself before God. If he once began to entangle 
himself in hair-splitting sophistries he was lost : * he 
that doubteth is condemned if he eat, because he eateth 
not of faith ; and whatsoever is not of faith is sin.' ^ 
But the ' faith ' that is here described would be quite 
wide of the mark if it were taken in the sense of belief 
or creed. It was by such a side-track as this that 
St. Augustine was supposed to have been led to the 
saying attributed to him, which I believe is really 
apocryphal: virtutes gentium splendida vitia. He did 
not say anything quite so pointed as this or quite so 
extreme ; but he did argue that there cannot be real 
virtue where there is not true religion, and that certain 
virtues vitia sunt potitcs quam virtutesP' As far back 
as Origen ^ it had been pointed out that the proposition 
was stated in a general form, and the question had 
been discussed whether or not it referred to heretics. 
And at the Reformation it is laid down in like manner, 

^ Rom. xiv. 23. - de Civ. Dei xix. 25. 

' ad loc, Comm, x. 5. 



1 8 /. Place of Comparative Religion 

e. g. by Peter Martyr, that ' the good workes of here- 
tikes are to them made sins \ 

III 

(i) Now the first question that I have to ask is 
what exactly is the view generally taken of Comparative 
Religion ? Is there a view that has been really thought 
out, and that has any weight of consent behind it ? 

I ask this question, not as a figure of speech, but 
honestly for the sake of information ; I am not at all 
sure what is the answer to it myself. 

My impression is that the study of Comparative 
Religion has rather grown up by the side of Theology 
in a sort of loose parallelism with it, than as a part of 
it. We think of it more as leading an independent and 
precarious existence outside than as sheltered beneath 
the same roof So far as I can recollect, the 
systematic theologians have let it alone, and have not 
defined their own attitude towards it. But they have 
not actively opposed it. 

If we run through the names which I enumerated 
just now as those of leaders in the study, it will be seen 
that all but one have been laymen. Sir E. B. Tylor 
and Andrew Lang were laymen. Robertson Smith is 
the first great name which is not that of a layman. 
And I would not say that he was not interested in 
doctrine. He was interested in doctrine ; but I think 
that his primary interest was in science, and that it was 
from the side of science that he approached the whole 
group of subjects with which he has been chiefly 



in Theological Study 19 

associated. Professor Max Mliller was a layman, 
though he edited a series of Sacred Books. I need 
not say that Sir James Frazer is very lay. Our own 
students of the Classical Religions are all lay. Our 
leading Assyriologists and Egyptologists have not been 
exclusively but predominantly lay. In this respect the 
question of calling has been, I think it may be said, 
more or less accidental. At the same time I am aware 
that it is from this side of Egyptological and Assyrio- 
logical learning and archaeology generally that our 
theologians have been drawn to the study of Com- 
parative Religion. I welcome the fact ; and I venture 
to say that I do not think the study could be in better 
hands. I believe it to be fortunate that hitherto (to 
the best of my belief) no theological shibboleths have 
been involved. 

And yet I do not think that I was wrong in saying 
that, so far as systematic theology and what may be 
called the general theological public are concerned, the 
study of Comparative Religion has been rather tolerated 
than encouraged. 

{2) This is the state of things which I venture to 
think should come to an end. The new science has 
become too deeply involved. The mass of materials 
collected under it has become too great. What I would 
suggest is that we should frankly take up this mass of 
materials and bring it into line with those of a higher 
order that we have already before us ; that we should 
try to work up the whole into a single scheme. I sub- 
mit that, if we study sympathetically the evolutionary 

c 2 



20 /. Place of Comparative Religion 

process — ^if we map it out in its broad tracts and 
masses — we shall see that it has had a certain relative 
rightness. That which has been, has been upon the 
whole — if only in the secondary sense of divine per- 
mission rather than divine command — that which God 
has willed should be. It has contributed in the 
end to the carrying out of His purposes. A residuum 
still remains over in the execution of those purposes ; 
and this residuum cannot be neglected. Some account 
of it should be taken if we are to understand the 
design of God for the world. 

I hope to have more to say on this subject in the 
next lecture, and to illustrate more freely the kind of 
use that I think may be made of this secondary 
matter. 

{3) I should be very reluctant even to seem to say 
anything in disparagement of Biblical Religion. If 
I should seem to do this, it would be only in the effort 
to make my statements as true as I can make them. 

We are concerned for the time specially with the 
Old Testament. And I have no doubt that, before we 
come to the New Testament, the Old Testament is in a 
special sense the classical book of Religion. It is so 
in a double sense. It not only lays down the highest 
and truest conception of God, but it also furnishes by 
far the best object-lesson of the nature of religion. 
The Hebrew prophets and holy men were possessed 
with God in a way in which no other race has been. 
Christianity itself is built up out of the same essential 
elements. Hebraism has been the training-ground in 



in Theological Study 21 

which the human soul has learnt how to bear itself in 
the presence of the Divine. This is the great outstand- 
ing fact, the one permanent gain. Compared with this 
everything else is secondary. 

(4) And yet there are two paradoxical and rather 
confusino^ features. The Bible as a classical and sacred 
volume points one way ; the Bible as a history of 
a religious development points another. The book is 
one thing ; the history of the religion is a different 
thing. To some extent the literary history and the 
actual religious history have an opposite effect, and 
play at cross-purposes. 

There are two things that we should try to grasp 
clearly in our own minds. One is that the ideal element 
in the Bible — the Bible as a norm and standard of 
religion — is relatively late. The other is that there 
is also an element that is early and primitive and in 
touch with the surrounding religions. And these two 
elements cross and intersect each other in such a way 
as to neutralize the impression which each would give 
by itself. 

We cannot perhaps have a better example of this 
than that which is given by the early chapters of 
Genesis. 

(5) I cannot doubt that the very first chapter of all 
has contributed greatly to the reception of the Bible 
as a sacred book. What a noble opening it is ! 
How simple, grave, and solemn ! How large and 
elevated and truly spiritual in its background ! And 
on the other hand, when once we have made full 



22 /. Place of Comparative Religion 

allowance for the stage of scientific knowledge implied 
in it, when we do not think of it as science in the 
modern acceptation of the word, but as translated into 
the forms of vision, and that religious vision, we shall 
I think feel the deep inner fitness and congruity. 

But then we have to remember that all this is late — 
probably after the Exile — not far removed from the 
time of the Great Unknown, the so-called Second 
Isaiah. 

Really this first chapter of Genesis — to the end of 
ii. 3 — is a sort of fagade, like that in some of the great 
cathedrals, built on as it were before the front of the 
succeeding chapters. The Hebraists are enthusiastic 
over the beautiful flowing and idiomatic Hebrew of 
the primitive writer who follows ; and they are apt to 
be somewhat critical of the comparative stiffness of the 
author v/ho contributes the framework and opening. 
But we are not concerned so much with the style as with 
the conception of the world and of God. And here 
there is no comparison in respect to maturity and 
elevation. There is probably something like three full 
centuries between the two writers — the one perhaps 
850-800 B.C. ; the other about 500 b.c. 

The later writer s work is grouped with that of the 
writing prophets, the exilic writers, and the psalmists. 
Along with these, it strikes the characteristic note that 
has made the Bible a sacred book. It does not allow 
us to forget that we are dealing with a classic of 
religion. 

(6) But at the same time, by covering and preserving 



/;/ Theological Study 23 

the natural features of the older document, it asserts 
the continuity which hnks up this sacred book with 
the realism and seeming imperfection of the evolutionary 
order. It is the naiveties of the Jehovist, his strong 
anthropomorphisms and touches of the vernacular — 
this walking in the garden, and sewing of fig-leaves, 
and smelling of sweet savour and the like — which have 
made the Bible not only a sacred book but also the 
book of the people. This is that side of the Bible 
which has caused it to twine itself round the affections — 
along with other books like The Pilgrims Progress, 
which have been modelled upon it. 

We are reminded of the fact that — in spite of the 
divine element In the Bible, the influence and shaping 
from above, the infusing of that which is in advance of 
nature — it is none the less at the same time a growth, 
an evolution from below. It has grown as human things 
grow — by endless experiment, by contact and imitation. 

It has never been the will of God that the disciples 
should be taken out of the world. They are left in 
the world in order that they ma}?- leaven it. And the 
same metaphor of leaven is the type of God's action. 
We may and we do analyse the process into its parts. 
But the analysis is from without and artificial. The 
real divine process has the perfect cohesion and infinite 
continuity of life. 

{7) In a broad sense, the two processes must be 
thought of as succeeding each other in order of time. 
The higher and more intensive seems to have been 
made possible by the fact that it had been preceded by 



24 /. Place of Comparative Religion 

the lower. To us it seems as if in the lower what we 
should call the human element preponderated. We 
should hardly venture to carry back the higher much 
behind Moses. Even in the time of Moses we should 
recognize the presence of the higher inspiration rather 
in the form of germinal ideas or principles than in any 
completed system. We have but to think of the signi- 
ficance for Israel of the fundamental ideas, (i) that 
Israel's God was a righteous God, and (ii) that He 
claimed to be served by a righteous people. In those 
two propositions we seem to have the ultimate germs 
of all the later development. 

But far back behind Moses religion had been there, 
struggling under conditions that we do not naturally 
associate with inspiration, marked by all that prodigality 
of experiment and slowness and uncertainty of advance 
that are characteristic ot Evolution; like the tide, 
advancing and retiring, retiring and advancing ; gaining 
a little here, and losing a little there ; fluctuating back- 
wards and forwards, but gaining in the end and on the 
whole. It is impossible to think of this process as 
* without God ', though we may think of it as from our 
subjective point of view depending rather on the 
general course of Divine Providence than on what we 
are apt to call the more direct and immediate influence 
of God. It is just such a case as seems to embody the 
spirit of Clough's lines : 

In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly. 
But westward, look, the land is bright ! 

If we make our periods long enough, and look first 



in Theological Study 25 

at the beginning and then at the end, there can be no 
doubt about the progress or the reality of the Divine 
overruling. The ultimate balance is on the side of 
good, though in intermediate or shorter periods the 
truth of this may be obscured. 



II 

NATURAL AND REVEALED 
RELIGION 



II 

NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION 

Let us go back in thought to Bishop Butler. He 
shared with his contemporaries a sufficiently simple and 
clear-cut scheme of things. But he differed from most 
of his contemporaries in his profound sense of the 
mystery lying all round this simple and clear-cut 
scheme. 

One strong point about the theory, and a point in 
which it is calculated to give a lead to us now, is that 
it was a complete and comprehensive unity. 

Butler thought of Religion as subsisting in two grades 
or stages. He and his contemporaries agreed in calling 
one grade Natural Religion and the other Revealed. 

There were some minor differences between them. 
Mr. Gladstone, for instance, pointed out ^' that Butler 
really made a threefold division. He called his first 
compartment 'the constitution and course of nature'; 
and he regarded the belief in God as given by this 
constitution and course of nature. The division does 
not seem a good one, and I do not think that it occurs 
more than once. But the language does not seem to 
bear any other construction. Natural Religion included 
for Butler the belief in a future life, with a system of 
rewards and punishments attached to this future life, 

^ In his note on Analogy^ I. ii. 4. 



30 //. Natural and Revealed Religion 

and a consequent description of the present life as a 
state of probation or discipline looking forward to the 
future. Other writers of the time embraced all these 
three heads under the common name of Natural 
Religion ; and they were sometimes expressed more 
concisely under the three single terms : God — Freedom 
or Virtue (according as stress was laid on the moral 
quality of the actions or the condition which made this 
moral quality possible) — Immortality. 

It is more important to note that while Butler and 
his fellows had a quite definite and clear idea of the 
contents of Natural Religion, they seem to have had a 
very vague idea of the process by which it was arrived 
at. Butler himself thought that Natural Religion went 
back to a primitive revelation. He could not think 
of the process as philosophical, because he does not 
believe that the truths of natural religion either could 
or would have been arrived at by reason ; ^ he asks his 
readers to consider * how unapt for speculation rude and 
uncultivated minds are \ He could not have thought 
of the process as historical ; because he shows no sign 
of having made any attempt to work out the history, 
nor had he the data for doing so. Neither does he 
seem to have generalized in anything more than the 
roughest prima facie way from the phenomena of the 
religions actually existing at the time. We can see that 
he is really guessing. For instance he ventures upon 
the following statement, which certainly goes beyond 
his evidence. 

/, II. i. I. 



Natural and Revealed Religion 31 

' It is certain historical fact, so far as we can trace 
thing^s up, that this whole system of belief, that there 
is one God, the Creator and moral Governor of the 
world, and that mankind is in a state of religion, was 
received in the first ages.' ^ 

The very idea of * one God, the Creator and moral 
Governor of the world ' is an advanced religious 
conception, and could not possibly be primitive. 

It does not perhaps necessarily follow that Butler 
need be so far wrong in his belief that man owes his 
knowledge of God and religion to a primitive revelation. 
In the last resort we may have to say that the religious 
illumination of mankind is due to divine influences of 
greater or less intensity. But this will need further 
explanation, and we should express it perhaps rather 
differently than Butler did. 

I 

Between Bishop Butler's day and our own there have 
intervened two great factors which have placed the 
whole question upon a new footing. 

(1) There is, first, the vast accumulation of material 
bearing upon the History of Religion or what we call 
Comparative Religion. I sketched some of the main 
lines of this process in the last lecture, and showed 
that it might be easily contained v/Ithin the period of 
the last fifty years. 

(2) And there is, second, the great idea of Evolution, 
which we have come to regard as covering the whole of 

1 Op. cit. I. vi. 17. 



32 //. Natural and Revealed Religion 

history, from the first beginnings of the universe so far 
as we can trace them down to our own time. We may 
take this idea as practically dating from the appearance 
of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859. 

It requires an effort to realize, truism as it is, that to 
write the history of Religion we have to begin with a 
tabula rasa. We have to go back to the cave-men. 
When man first appeared upon the earth, everything 
existed in posse but absolutely nothing in esse. The 
creature newly stranded upon the earth's surface, from 
the first moment that he acquired a substantive 
existence, was left — or seemed to be left — to his own 
resources. Whatever divine help might be awaiting 
him, was as yet invisible and potential. If the details 
of the early history of Religion are apt to seem sordid, 
it could not be otherwise. The problem begins at the 
very outset. 

Presumptuous man ! the reason wouldst thou find, 
Why form'd so weak, so little, and so blind ? 
First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess. 
Why form'd no weaker, blinder, and no less ? 

So far as the great problem is concerned, we are no 
further now than we were when Pope wrote his Essay 
on Man in 1734 or when Butler published his Analogy 
in 1736. 

We cannot tell a whit better than we could why God 
has thought fit to construct the universe on the principle 
of Evolution. That is a problem which by the nature 
of the case must be immeasurably beyond us. If we 
followed our own instincts and our own shortsightedness 



Naiitrat and Revealed Religion 33 

we might expect rather that He would have acted upon 
some such principle as that of simultaneous perfection. 
O nly one thought may occur to us. That is the thought 
that Evolution, more than any other principle of which 
it seems possible to conceive, admits of absolutely 
infinite extension and variety. A static universe, 
however perfect, seems at least as if we must come to 
the end of it much sooner.^ It is rather waste of time 
to puzzle our brains with these insoluble riddles. It 
seems wiser to take the world as it is and try to under- 
stand it on the basis of the laws by which it is certainly 
governed. 

Evolution is one of those laws. And it seems to 
have also a corollary which is not much less fertile as 
a principle of understanding. There is one absolute 
axiom, one golden rule, which seems to be correlative 
to the principle of Evolution. That is, wherever the 
process of evolution exists, it must be judged by the 
ends and not by the beginnings. 

If we hold fast to this, no seeming crudities or 
imperfections can ever seriously trouble us. They all 
belong to the past, and all lie more or less behind us. 
They are there only to be emerged from ; they exist 
only to be vanquished. 

II 

Religion begins with a blank. But everything begins 

with a blank. It seems almost too much to say that Man 

began as a conscious being. He began as a sentient 

being, with the potentiality of consciousness. Ought 

^ See Browning's poem ' Rephan '. 

D 



34 J^' Natural and Revealed Religion 

we to say more ? Does not consciousness imply the 
differentiation of feelings ? And is not that a further 
and distinct step onwards ? I can quite believe that 
these early stages in the history of thought were got 
through w^vy rapidly. The whole mental faculty 
of the new being was concentrated upon them. And 
I can also well believe that there was divine help in 
the process. Selden was apparently right when he 
said that Providence concurred in everything.^ But to 
us it seems as if there were different degrees of 
concurrence ; and we can only speak as they appear to 
us. We do not know them as they really are. 

The stage of Religion begins at the point where there 
grows up a sense or impression of a Something outside 
which co-operates with or thwarts the impulses or 
desires from within. At first the idea of this Something 
was very vague. And men looked about them to see 
if they could identify it in anything near them that 
they could hear or see. The multitude of objects 
confused them. But it was natural that they should 
guess at something of unusual shape, or that gave forth 
an unusual sound, or that in some other way was weird 
and strange. It was in this way that primitive man 
arrived at Fetishism or Totemism. Fetishism would 
take the form of some prominent and curious stump or 
stone. Totemism would take the form of some uncanny 
beast or bird or reptile. Totemism might give place 
to Animal-worship on a larger scale. The ancient 
world was full of fierce and savage beasts, who 
* Table Talk, s.v. * Marriage'. 



Natural and Revealed Religion 35 

were formidable enemies of man and could contend 
with him on more equal terms than they can now. 
This contending with the beasts was probably no small 
stimulus to invention, both of material weapons and the 
use of them, and in social organization. The hunt must 
have been one of the oldest forms of society. The 
advantages of combination for one kind of purpose 
would soon lead to the practice of combination for others. 

Meantime other causes would be at work. The 
images that float before the mind in dreams would be 
the first to suggest the idea of spirits. Consciousness 
of the inner working of the mind itself would suggest 
the attribution of a similar working to external objects ; 
and it would be some time before the difference would 
be understood between the objects that we call animate 
and those that we call inaminate. Such processes as 
these would explain the rise of different kinds of 
Animism. One of the most distinctive and hig^hest 
forms of Animism was Ancestor-worship. This was 
very widespread in remote antiquity. And by the time 
that we have come to Ancestor-worship we are really 
entering upon the higher region. You will remember 
the attractive picture drawn for us in Pater's Marius 
the Epicurean. The ancient Roman household was an 
active school of ' piety \ Its seriousness, its simplicity, 
its grave manners, its careful observance, its sense of 
responsibility, were an excellent training for worship 
on a more extended scale and with a more exalted 
object. 

Then again Anthropomorphism was a distinct advance 

D 2 



36 //. Natural and Revealed Religion 

upon Animal-worship. To invest the idea of deity 
with the qualities of men was at least better than to 
invest it with the qualities of animals. By this time 
the human mind had begun to climb the staircase of 
the ideal. The abstract idea of deity was being formed ; 
and the step from the abstract idea to the spiritual idea 
was not so very long. 

Before this point has been reached, we are already 
conscious of a great widening of the horizon. The 
worship of the greater Powers of Nature must stand 
high in the scale of religious values. 



Ill 

This is the point that I think I will choose at which 
to introduce specimens of the real religious contents of 
some of these pagan faiths. Suppose that by this time 
the ladder has been reared by which the human spirit 
has ascended to the point to which we have brought it ; 
let us too climb and see what we find at the top. I do 
not know how far your experience will correspond to 
mine. But I was certainly astonished when I first 
made the discovery which I am about to impart to you. 
I will take two examples, first from the religion of 
Egypt, then from the religion of Babylonia. I think 
it may be best simply to state the examples first, and 
not until we have done so attempt to weigh them. 
But when they have been stated and to some extent 
weighed, I think that we may perhaps put them to a 
further use by trying to draw some kind of inference 



Natural and Revealed Religion 37 

as to the way in which they may be applied with 
reference to the History of Religion as a whole and its 
bearing upon our own day. 

Amenhotep (Amenophis) IV was a Pharaoh of the 
Eighteenth Dynasty whose date can be approximately 
fixed. He succeeded his father Amenhotep HI about 
1 3 7 5 B. c. and died about 1358. His reign falls within the 
period covered by the famous Tell el-Amarna tablets. 
He was not a strong or a resolute ruler. As a ruler, his 
heart was not in his task, and under him the wide 
empire built up by his predecessors in the dynasty 
gradually crumbled away. But he was a genius in 
religion. He carried out a great religious reform, the 
object of which was to concentrate worship on Aton, 
*the disk of the sun*. He ended by breaking with 
the powerful priesthood of Amon at Thebes and moving 
his court to a new city which he founded on the site 
now known as Tell el-Amarna and called it Akhetaton ; 
and he changed his own name to Ikhnaton or Akhna- 
ton. On the walls of the neighbouring cliff-tombs are 
inscribed texts of a hymn which apparently formed 
part of the ritual of the worship of Aton. We have 
to put aside for a moment the fact that this ritual is 
addressed to a material and created object ; and how 
easy it is to forget this ! The hymn reads like pure 
monotheism. The author was thinking indeed of the 
visible sun, but he thought of it as a god. 

It is an inevitable drawback that I can quote only 
fragments of what is itself a collection of fragments. 
I avail myself of the carefully revised text in J. H. 



38 //. Natural and Revealed Religion 

Breasted's Development of Religion and Thought in 
Ancient Egypt (19 12). 

The hymn begins with a description of the rising and 
setting of the sun s disk (Aton). 

Thy dawning is beautiful in the horizon of the sky, 

O living Aton, Beginning of life ! 

When thou risest in the eastern horizon, 

Thou fillest every land with thy beauty. 

Thou art beautiful, great, glittering, high above every 

land. 
Thy rays, they encompass the lands, even all that thou 

hast made. 
Thou art Re ^, and thou carriest them all away captive ; 
Thou bindest them by thy love. 
Though thou art far away, thy rays are upon earth ; 
Though thou art on high, thy [footprints are the day]. 

When thou settest in the western horizon of the sky, 

The earth is in darkness like the dead ; 

They sleep in their chambers, 

Their heads are wrapped up. 

Their nostrils are stopped, 

And none seeth the other. 

Then comes a picture of the way in which the sun- 
rise is saluted by men and animals, even the smallest. 

Bright is the earth when thou risest in the horizon. 

When thou shinest as Aton by day 

Thou drivest away the darkness. 

When thou sendest forth thy rays. 

The Two Lands (Egypt, Northern and Southern) are 

in daily festivity. 
Awake and standing upon their feet 

* An ancient name for the sun-god ; there is a play on words here 
as the name also means * all '. 



Natural and Revealed Religion 39 

When thou hast raised them up. 
Their limbs bathed, they take their clothing, 
Their arms uplifted in adoration to thy dawning. 
(Then) in all the world they do their work. 

All cattle rest upon their pasturage, 

The trees and the plants flourish. 

The birds flutter in their marshes, 

Their wings uplifted in adoration to thee. 

All the sheep dance upon their feet, 

All winged things fly, 

They live when thou hast shone upon them. 

We might be reading Wordsworth's great Ode ; but 
what follows goes beyond Wordsworth. 

When the fledgling in the ^gg chirps in the shell, 

Thou givest him breath therein to preserve him alive. 

When thou hast [brought him together], 

To (the point of) bursting it in the ^g<g. 

He cometh forth from the ^gg 

To chirp [with all his might]. 

He goeth about upon his two feet 

When he hath come forth therefrom. 

Then again praise of Aton as Creator, whose benefits 

extend not only to Egypt but to Syria and Ethiopia. 

Egypt (which is almost rainless) has the Nile ; foreign 

countries have as it were a Nile in the sky, which 

waters the earth in the form of rain. 

How manifold are thy works ! 

They are hidden from before (us), 

O sole God, whose powers no other possesseth. 

Thou didst create the earth according to thy heart 

While thou wast alone : 

Men, all cattle large and small, 

All that are upon the earth. 

That go about upon their feet; 



40 //. Natural and Revealed Religion 

All that are on high, 
That fly with their wings. 



Thou makest the Nile in the Nether World, 

Thou bringest it as thou desirest, 

To preserve alive the people. 

For thou hast made them for thyself, 

The lord of them all, resting among them, 

Thou Sun of day, great in majesty. 

All the distant countries, 

Thou makest (also) their life, 

Thou hast set a Nile in the sky ; 

When it falleth for them, 

It maketh waves upon the mountains. 

Like the great green sea. 

Watering their fields in their towns. 

How excellent are thy designs, O lord of eternity ! 

There is a Nile in the sky for the strangers 

And for the cattle of every country that go upon their 

feet. 
(But) the Nile, it cometh from the Nether World for 

Egypt. 

Then yet more praise of Aton, whose work varies 
according to the seasons ; an acknowledgement of the 
revelation which he has put in the heart of the king. 

Thy rays nourish every garden ; 

When thou risest they live, 

They grow by thee. 

Thou makest the seasons 

In order to create all thy work : 

Winter to bring them coolness, 

And heat that [they may taste] thee. 

Thou didst make the distant sky to rise therein, 

In order to behold all that thou hast made, 



Natural and Revealed Religion 41 

Thou alone, shining in thy form as living Aton, 

Dawning, glittering, going afar and returning. 

Thou makest millions of forms 

Through thyself alone ; 

Cities, towns, and tribes, highways and rivers. 

All eyes see thee before them. 

For thou art Aton of the day over the earth. 

Thou art in my heart, 

There is no other that knoweth thee 

Save thy son Ikhnaton. 

Thou hast made him wise 

In thy designs and in thy might. 

The world is in thy hand, 

Even as thou hast made them. 

When thou hast risen they live. 

When thou settest they die; 

For thou art length of life of thyself, 

Men live through thee, 

While (their) eyes are upon thy beauty 

Until thou settest. 

All labor is put away 

When thou settest in the west.^ 

What a sense of life runs through the poem ! What 
a sense of dependent life, and of joy and delight in this 
dependence! What a combination of largeness and 
minuteness — the largeness seen in the range of thought, 
which is not only in no wise bounded by Egyptian 
territory but extends to the surrounding nations as 
well, and embraces all the multitudinous forms of being ; 
the minuteness seen in the delicately sympathetic 
descriptions of nature, and especially in that lovely 
stanza about the chicken breaking its shell, which the 
^ Op. cit. pp. 324-8. 



42 //. Natural and Revealed Religion 

sun's light penetrates and imparts life and the joy of 
life even before the chick itself is born. 

I need hardly point out the resemblance to the 
hundred and fourth Psalm, with which, great as it is, 
this Egyptian poem may well sustain comparison, 
though it was written in all probability centuries 
before, indeed more than a century before the date 
commonly assigned to the Exodus. 

The hymn exists in a shorter form as well as a longer. 
I was obliged to quote from the latter, in order to do 
justice to the various points which I have tried to 
bring out. But the shorter form is in some respects 
even more impressive in force and concentration of 
expression. In more than one of the texts I gather 
that the hymn is expressly ascribed to the Pharaoh 
himself; it can hardly have proceeded from any but 
the leading spirit of the movement to which it belongs. 

It is a notable fact that the same king appears to 
have invented or developed a new style of art corre- 
sponding to his new form of religion. Like so much 
of the dominant art of Ancient Egypt generally, it is 
expressed only in outline. But it is a striking example 
— perhaps the most striking in the whole history of 
Egypt — of the effect of which this outline-art was 
capable. A new and remarkable symbol was employed 
to bring home the power of the sun-god.^ He literally 
* rains influence down'. The rays are shafts which 
terminate in tiny hands. In the case of the king and 
queen these hands are armed with the symbol of life, 
* See^^the^frontispiece. 



Natural and Revealed Religion 43 

which touches their lips as if conveying inspiration. 
And the same naturalness and tender human feeling 
find expression as in the poem. The royal pair are 
represented fondling their children in the freedom and 
privacy of domestic life. 

Still a vein of fanaticism appears in the antagonism 
to the old religion. And it is not surprising that the 
death of Ikhnaton should have been followed by a vio- 
lent reaction. In a short time the priesthood and 
worship of Amon recovered their power ; the memory 
of the reforming Pharaoh was denounced and the 
traces of his work in turn swept away. And yet it 
had not been altogether in vain. A real spirit of piety 
and devoutness had been evoked, which gradually spread 
among the lower classes and made itself felt in the 
traditional religion. 

We must not expect to find progress always direct 
and unimpeded. From time to time the human spirit 
seems to put forth an exceptional effort. Then it 
relapses and sinks back exhausted. But all the while 
some solid ground is won ; and in another wholly 
different quarter a new advance is made. 

Both in Egypt and in Babylonia there was a large ele- 
ment of magic mixed up with religion. But, as I have 
said, magic was also a nursing-ground of science. In 
Babylonia it largely took the form of astrology. But the 
Chaldaean priests in their contemplation of the heavens 
made many a sound observation ; and out of these, as 
they came in contact with the quicker Hellenic mind, 
there gradually grew up the science of astronomy. 



44 II' Natural and Revealed Religion 

The Babylonians had gifts of another kind. 

They were a serious people, and they must have had 

a highly developed sense of justice. It was a great 

surprise to the learned world when the French explorers 

discovered on the site of Susa (Shushan), where it had 

been carried by an Elamite conqueror, the famous Stele 

of Hammurabi, inscribed with a whole code of law which 

is presented to the King by the sun-god Shamash.^ 

The date of Hammurabi is now fixed almost exactly 

at 21 23-2081 B.C. The spirit of the code comes out 

sufficiently in the introduction : 

'When the supreme Anu, king of the Anunnaki 
(along with Igigi, '' collective names for a lower order of 
gods "), and Enlil, the lord of heaven and earth, who 
fixes the destiny of the land, had committed to Marduk, 
the first-born of Ea, the rule of all mankind, making 
him great among the Igigi, gave to Babylon his supreme 
name, making it pre-eminent in the regions (of the 
world), and established therein an enduring kingdom, 
firm in its foundation like heaven and earth — at that 
time they appointed me, Hammurapi^, the exalted ruler, 
the one who fears the gods, to let justice shine in the 
land, to destroy the wicked and unjust that the strong 
should not oppress the weak, that I should go forth like 
the sun over mankind.' ^ 

Dr. Jastrow comments further upon this : 

* It is significant that he refers to his conquests only 
incidentally, and lays the chief stress upon what he did 
for the gods and for men, enumerating the temples that 

* This was first published in Paris in 1894. 

^ Dr. Jastrow says that this is the more correct spelling ; but the 
other is I believe universal in this country. 

^ Religious Belief in Babylonia and Assyria^ M. Jastrow Jr., p. 35. 



Natural and Revealed Religion 45 

he built and beautified, the security that he obtained 
for his subjects, the protection that he granted to those 
in need of aid. " Law and justice ", he concludes, '' I 
established in the land and promoted the well-being of 
the people." ' ^ 

The Babylonians, as I have said, were a serious 
people, and their religion was a serious religion. They 
did not make light of sin ; but when they were conscious 
of it, they confessed it with much earnestness. Specially 
characteristic are the penitential psalms, which are not 
unworthy to be the genuine prototype of those in the 
J ewish Canon. Dr. J astro w gives an interesting account 
of them. 

* Confession and lament are the burden of these 
psalms : 

Many are my sins that I have committed, 
May I escape this misfortune, may I be relieved from 
distress ! 

and again : 

My eye is filled with tears, 

On my couch I lie at night, full of sighs, 

Tears and sighing have bowed me down. 

The indications are distinct in these compositions 
that they formed part of a ritual, in which the officiating 

^ Ibid., p. 36. Similarly, Dr. Burney (Judges^ p. Ixii) : ' Hammurabi 
was not merely a conqueror, but in the best sense an organizer and 
ruler ; and it is probable that any region over which he claimed the title 
of " king " was not a mere sphere for occasional razzias aimed at the 
collection of booty and tribute, but would experience, at least to some 
extent, the benefits of his good government and civilizing influence.' 
[This last statement in correction of Hogarth, The Ancient Easty 
pp. 24 f.] 



46 //. Natural and Revealed Religion 

priest and the [royal] penitent each had his part. The 
priest, as mediator, enforces the appeal of the penitent : 

He weeps, overpowered he cannot restrain himself. 
Thou hearest earnest lament, turn thy countenance to 

him ! 
Thou acceptest petition, look faithfully on him ! 
Thou receivest prayer, turn thy countenance to him ! 
Lord of prayer and petition, let the prayer reach thee ! 
Lord of petition and prayer, let the prayer reach thee ! 

The appeal is here made to Enlil, Marduk, and Nebo, 
and closes with the refrain which is frequent in the 
penitential psalms : 

May thy heart be at rest, thy liver be appeased! 
May thy heart like the heart of the young mother, — 
Like that of the mother who has borne, and of the 
father who has begotten, — return to its place! '^ 

I cannot afford to dwell longer on these psalms ; but 

I must content myself with saying that, just as Ikhnaton 

gave expression to a high type of adoration, so did the 

Babylonians to a high type oi penitence. It is utterly 

out of the question to dismiss these things as products 

of unenlightened heathenism. It is quite certain that 

they are part of the witness which in every age God 

has left us of Himself. It is for this reason that I said 

that after all Bishop Butler was not so very far wrong, 

though he had not quite succeeded in finding the right 

formula for the facts, when he set them down to a 

* primitive revelation '. We must think of them rather 

as due to a continuous Divine guidance, hardly differing 

in kind from that special selective process that we call 

* Op. cit, p. 329 ; compare the same author's Civilization of 
Babylonia and Assyria (19 15), pp. 469 ii. 



Natural and Revealed Religion 47 

revelation, but only covering a wider ground and leaving 
more freedom for the play of human initiative. If we 
may allow ourselves to think of God as the great 
Organist of the universe, then all the difference that 
there would be would correspond to slightly less or 
slightly more sustained pressure upon the keys. 

IV 

Can we discover any laws or general expressions 
which may help us to put such episodes as these in 
their places in the course of religious evolution and 
assign to them their values in the upward ascent? 
The suggestion that I have to make is only tentative, 
and I do not attach much importance to it. But would 
anything be gained by bringing them under such heads 
as (i) transference of object ; (ii) refinement of method ? 

For an example of ' transference of object \ need 
we go further than the hymn of Amenophis IV which 
I have just quoted at some length ? The hymn shows 
us the act of Adoration or Worship carried (surely) 
to a high degree of perfection. I have already com- 
mented on the remarkable combination of largeness 
and delicacy. I do not very well see how anything — 
at least at that date — could possibly be larger. The 
triumphant course of the Sun across the heavens ; the 
ecstatic rejoicing that greets his appearance ; his eye 
of supreme command ; his influence penetrating every 
nook and corner. And then that sweet image of the 
chick issuing forth from its shell, and responding to the 
light before it issues forth. Would not that picture have 



48 //. Nahiral and Revealed Religion 

been worthy to be introduced into the Hundred and 
Fourth Psalm ? 

* That he may bring food out of the earth, and wine 
that maketh glad the heart of man : and oil to make 
him a cheerful countenance, and bread to strengthen 
man's heart. 

The trees of the Lord also are full of sap : even the 
cedars of Libanus which he hath planted ; 

Wherein the birds make their nests : and the fir-trees 
are a dwelling for the stork. 

The high hills are a refuge for the wild goats : and 
so are the stony rocks for the conies.' 

Even the conies are not touched with so fine a pencil 
as that poor little fledgeling stepping out into the wide 
world and in the spirit of him and in his small degree 
rejoicing like a giant to run his course. 

It is true that Amenophis worshipped a created 
object — perhaps the grandest, or one of the grandest, 
of all created objects. But when we think of the 
penetrating way in which he enters into the spirit of 
this self-chosen worship — when we think of the near 
approach that he makes to Monotheism, and the no less 
near approach that he makes to the conception of 
personality, and of divine personality — when we think 
of the poetry and elevation, the tender feeling and 
insight with which he invests his whole handling of 
the subject, does he not seem almost to rise through 
the creature to the Creator ? Does not the created 
thing become a symbol, a vehicle to something higher ? 
Is it too much to say that he is almost — if it is really 
necessary to insert an ' almost ' — in touch with God ? 



Natural and Revealed Religion 49 

V 

I will venture upon another example — another 
tentative example — of the other head ; of what may 
be done in the way of purifying and spiritualizing a 
religious conception. 

In the year 1906 Sir J. G. Frazer brought out 
a special part of his great work The Goldeji Bough 
under the triple title Adonis — Attis — Osiris, which has 
since been incorporated in the third edition. It illus- 
trates with extraordinary wealth of learning the three 
allied cults which held a prominent place in the regions 
of the Eastern Levant. Really Adonis was the Greek 
equivalent of the older Babylonian deity Tammuz, 
whose rites are mentioned as having made their way 
to Jerusalem in Ezek. vili. 14. The worship of Adonis 
was localized especially at Byblus on the coast of 
Syria and at Paphos in Cyprus. By the systematic 
application of comparative mythology and comparative 
religion Sir J. G. Frazer is able to prove the funda- 
mental identity of the three cults along with their local 
differences. 

There is no doubt that all three are associated with 
the growth of vegetation. It is true that the time of 
year of the great festivals varies. But that is only 
because of the difference in the incidence of agricultural 
operations. The position of Egypt, as fertilized by the 
Nile, was peculiar. It is also probable that a certain 
amount of dislocation had been caused by the confusion 
and readjustment of the Egyptian calendar.^ 
^ Op. cit., p. 265. 



50 //. Natural and Revealed Religion 

The ceremonies which constituted the three worships 
were essentially bound up with the critical moments of 
seed-time and harvest. The spring festival represented 
rejoicing at the new birth of the god ; the harvest festival 
represented mourning at his departure. Doubtless 
ideas of magic were much wrapped up in both. The 
worshippers by their rites thought that they were 
helping the god to accomplish the processes which 
contributed so much to their welfare. Magic, as we 
have seen, was only an older, lower, and cruder form of 
prayer. It was a rudimentary stage, more or less mixed 
in its content from the first, which must be thought of 
as underlying all the prayer and devotion of to-day. 

That would seem to be an account of what, humanly 
speaking, might be called the origin of these associated 
cults. But it is far from being the whole of the matter. 
Round the worship there grew up a mythology. And 
that mythology was the life-story of a god. The story 
was a humanized form of the original idea. Before it 
could revive, the seed planted in the ground had to 
decay and die. There was a death followed by a 
resurrection. 

In the later forms of the cult these ideas become 
the most prominent. We are most familiar with the 
Hellenized version through the fifteenth idyll of 
Theocritus, written at Alexandria about 270 b. c, and 
vividly reproduced in Matthew Arnold's essay on 
* Pagan and Mediaeval Religious Sentiment '. In 
this the effect has become mainly aesthetic. It is 
poetry passing into and annexed by religion. It is 



Natural and Revealed Religion 51 

a scenic representation of the story of the dying and 
rising god. 

That is the sum of the whole matter, so far as the 
ancient reh'gious application is concerned. We see it 
at two stages : the first as a series of magical rites 
which have for their object to promote the fertility of 
crops and herds. This is gradually supplanted by the 
human story of the dying and the rising deity. 

That is all the external history of the matter. And 
we need not go any further. But the Christian cannot 
help being struck by the strange coincidence with the 
mysteries — the central mystery — of his own religion. 
He is reminded of the manifold applications in the 
New Testament of the same idea of dying and rising 
again. It begins in historical, if transcendent fact, 
an historic Death and an historic Resurrection. It is 
applied liturgicall}^ in the rite of Baptism which is 
frequently described under the same metaphor ; ^ it is 
applied ethically to the putting off of the old man and 
the walking in newness of life. 

There is not the slightest real connexion between the 

pagan ideas and the Christian ideas. And yet, is it 

possible that the coincidence can be wholly accidental ? 

Can we help seeing in it the hand of God ? It is in 

each case on so large a scale. The three cults of which 

we have been speaking occupy a large space in ancient 

religion. Must we not think that there was something 

prophetic about them ? A sort of divine guidance 

which made them point beyond themselves ? 

^ Rom. vi. 4, &c. 
E 2 



52 //. Natural and Revealed Religion 

Such thino^s as these — and there are not a few other 
examples — make us ask whether there are not in the 
universe certain fundamental tendencies, 'pre-estab- 
lished harmonies ', which find expression from time 
to time and bear witness to the unity of their origin ? 
We are in a region here which is rather that of pious 
belief than of demonstration. But there certainly is 
room for such beliefs, and they fall in with the over- 
whelming proof that the universe has a single Author 
and a single goal. 



Ill 

ON THE NATURE OF MIRACLE 



Ill 

ON THE NATURE OF MIRACLE 

[7/ has happened to me in regard to this lecture as 
I suppose must have often happened to lecturers before. 
At the time when the course was announced in the 
Gazette this third lecture was not written ; it was not 
even begun, I coidd only give a title which expressed 
my intention in writing it, ^ On some Debated 
Points of Present-day Theology'. As actually 
written it would be more fitly described if I were 
to call it : 

' On the Nature of Miracle.' 

But there is something more in my mind than a change 
of title. Behind it there lies a real modification in the 
position which I desire to defend. That modification 
is only four days old. It did not occur to me until 
quite two-thirds of the lecture had been written. It is 
in one sense a modification of form rather than of 
substance. It expresses what I should all along have 
wished to say ; but I had not quite got to the point of 
defining it as I propose to do. There is a distinct shade 
of meaning that ought to be conveyed and that I know 
I should not have succeeded in conveying. 

There is this further happy consequence. My task 
has been a difficult one, and I have been conscious of a 



56 III, On the Nature of Miracle 

considerable amount of tension in writing. But I have 
some hope that, zvith the modification of which I am 
thinking, the tension may be almost , if not completely , 
relaxed. I will tell you, if I may, when I come to it, 
the exact point at which the new turn came to me. I 
hardly think that I need alter anything that I had 
written before that point was reached."] 

I CANNOT conceal from myself that for some years 
past — in fact since 1 9 1 2 — I have seemed to hold extreme 
views on certain questions of theology. Up till now, 
in my capacity as professor, I have kept complete 
silence about them. But on this last occasion, when I 
am laying down my chair, it seems right that I should 
break the silence and for once publicly explain my 
position. I believe I can do so in few words. 

I may begin by saying that I am not one of those 
who exalt the authority of the teaching office. It 
happened to me once or twice, not here but in old days 
when I was at Durham where the world was perhaps 
more docile, to be approached by pupils who would come 
to me and say, * You see, Sir, we come to you to tell us 
what we ought to think.' I replied, ' No, I am not here 
to tell you what you ought to think, but to help you to 
think for yourselves.' That has been my attitude all 
my life. 

And yet, perhaps all the more on this account, I have 
had my scruples as a teacher. I have not thought it 
right to endeavour to commend my private views or to 
seek to gain proselytes for them. And, as a matter of 



On the Nature of Miracle 57 

fact, I think I may say that I have carefully abstained 
from doing so. It has happened that I could do this 
the more easily because I had taken as the continuous 
subject of my regular lectures the Praeparatio Evan- 
gelica ; and in this subject none of the particular burning 
questions were raised. 

So, within the range of my work as professor, there 
may be said to have been (as it were) oil upon the 
waters. The field of controversy has been outside. 
Here I did not impose upon myself any such self-denying 
ordinance, but I have taken my chances in the rneUe just 
as they came. 

There have been one or two crises, or what I thought 
were crises, in the Church during the last few years ; 
and, rightly or wrongly, I have felt a call to intervene. 

I 

I cannot honestly deny the charge if it is said that 
the opinions which I entertain are extreme. But I 
should like to explain — indeed I think it my duty to 
explain — ^just in what sense and to what extent I 
acknowledge its truth. 

I know that I have no tendency to extremes in the 
matter of temperament. The old Greek motto \ir\h\v 
Siyav^ 'Moderation in all things,' has great attractions 
for me. 

It is not here that the extremes come in. The region 
where they do come in is purely intellectual. I believe 
that opinion ought to be logical, that in the end it will 



58 ///. On the Nature of Miracle 

be logical, and that of two opinions that which is most 
logical is sure to prevail. Of course I mean by this 
opinions of a certain kind. I exclude altogether those 
which turn upon the question of expediency. I am only 
concerned with those to which we must in the last resort 
apply the epithets 'true' and * false '. But as the debated 
points with which we have to deal are of this kind, I 
lay down the rule without qualification. 

When I say that opinion should be logical, I mean 
that it should be consistent or all of a piece. It will 
not do to let what is practically the same process of 
reasoning lead to one conclusion one day and to quite 
a different conclusion the next. Certain positions are 
tenable and certain other positions are not tenable. 
You cannot halt in the middle of No-man's land. You 
are bound to go on. You must always be able to show 
cause, not only why you go so far as you do, but also 
why you stop precisely where you do. 

This is a law of the thinking process. In regard to 
it the thinker s responsibility is really at a minimum. 
H e cannot help himself. H is action is almost impersonal. 
But it is apt to seem extreme. 

II 

And yet I have this reason for not regarding con- 
clusions reached in this way as extreme. The logic 
does not always lie upon the surface but beneath the 
surface. I should put it that, where the old and the 
new opinions are bound and clamped together by such 



On the Nature of Miracle 59 

ties, they are virtually the same. The difference 
between them is not a difference of essence. Rather 
they agree in essence ; it is only in accident that they 
differ. 1 

This is what I mean when I speak of the difference 
of times. I look upon it that the Christian ages succeed 
each other ; that each age has its own context or body 
of thought ; that the transmitted doctrines which come 
down to it must be adapted and adjusted to this body 
of thought ; and that by the process they do not lose 
their own identity. 

There is in them an element which may be described 
as mutatis mutandis. But the element which is strictly 
continuous and the same is very considerable indeed. 

Christianity is a great spiritual system. That 
spiritual system remains constant. Our object is two- 
fold, partly an object of belief and partly of life. We 
desire to think of God as Christ thought of Him, and 
as St. Paul and St. John thought of Him. And we 
desire also to remain in the same personal relation to 
God and Christ in which the apostles and the apostolic 
writers stood to Them. That should be — and I submit 
that it is — a sufficient bond of identity and union. 

Ill 

Now I must ask you to forgive me, and not think it 
unduly egotistical, if I follow the example of St. Paul 

^ Again I would ask to compare a poem of Browning's — 
* Development \ 



6o ///. On the Nature of Miracle 

by * transferring in a figure to myself* (y.^Ta<Ty^\iaTi(<ii 
€19 ifiavToi/) what I have to say on the general subject. 
It is not that I think this personal aspect of it impor- 
tant, but that the shortest, the quickest, and the most 
direct way of dealing with the subject is to have before 
our minds a concrete example ; and the concrete exam- 
ple about which I know most is naturally myself. It 
may save a good deal of circumlocution if I may be 
allowed to use the first person singular rather freely. 

From this point of view, the question that it will be 
best worth our while to discuss is the question of 
Miracle. Other questions are involved — more par- 
ticularly that of credal obligation. But this, and 
I think I may say all the other subordinate questions 
that are raised round it, come in as parts of an argu- 
ment in reference to Miracle. 

It has been rather indirectly than directly that in 
recent years this question of Miracle has come to have 
so much prominence for me. I began my career as 
a theologian by deliberately putting it aside. I decided 
that my best course was to hold it in suspense. 

The natural method for me to employ is inductive. 
I said to myself, when I began to work at theology, 
that I must begin at the beginning — I must know 
where I am. I must begin with the literature. I must 
put myself to school both in the lower criticism and in 
the higher. I must try to learn what are the right 
texts. I must try to put these texts into their right 
environment. I must consider questions of authorship, 
of genuineness and the like. 



Oil the Nature of Miracle 6i 

This is what I did to the best of my abiHty. Other 
people may have done it, or would have done it, 
better. But I did what I could according to my lights. 

The sort of general conclusion at which I arrived 
might be called conservative or liberal-conservative. 
Then the theological world was pleased with me, 
and it still reminds me of those better days. I have 
not swung round so much as it supposes, though 
I have to some extent swung round. 

I'm afraid there is one important point on which 
I was probably wTong — the Fourth Gospel. The 
problem is very complex and difficult ; and I have 
such a love of simplicity that I expect my tendency 
was to simplify too much, and to try too much to reach 
a solution on the ground of common sense. Perhaps 
I should say in passing that the contribution to this 
subject which has made the greatest impression upon 
me in recent years has been the article by Baron 
Friedrich von Hugel in the eleventh edition of the 
Encyclopaedia Britannica. The turning-point in my 
own mind was when I began to take in more directly 
than I had hitherto done this question of Miracle. 

The landmarks of my life have been landmarks in 
a process of self-education. The results lie on the 
table, and they are what they are. If you think that 
there ought to be more to show, I quite agree. But 
the defect is radical. I doubt very much whether 
I have had it in me to do much more than I have. 
I am really a slow worker ; what I have written at all 
rapidly has almost always been written more or less at 



62 ///. On the Nature of Miracle 

heat. The process of incubation has usually been 
a long one. I have not — I know that I have not — 
a capacious brain. When I know what I want to say, 
it often costs me a considerable effort to say it. I have 
spent more time than most men over rough copies. 
If the world cared to estimate what it owed to me, 
a large part would consist in what it has been spared. 
A great deal of bad work of mine has never seen the 
light. 

There are just two things that I can say for myself. 
My work, such as it is, has always taken precedence of 
everything else. And I have not been sparing of 
self-criticism. I have aimed at simplicity and clear- 
ness ; and I have not been satisfied until I had attained 
something of those qualities. 

IV 

I said that I began by taking up a neutral position 
on the subject of Miracle. The period during which 
I maintained this lasted till the end of 191 2. It might 
be said to fall roughly into two halves. The first half 
had for its landmark the publication of my article on 
the 'Life of our Lord ' in vol. ii of Hastings's Dictionary 
of the Bible, This was in 1899. A little collection of 
documents covering the period is contained in the 
second and later editions of the reprint of this article, 
under the title Outlines of the Life of Christ, from 1 906 
onwards. In this there were added two surveys of 
the general position as I seemed to see it in 1903 and 



On the Nature of Miracle 63 

1905. What I may call the second half of the period 
also had its two landmarks at the beginning and at 
the end. The first may be seen in the chapter on 
* Miracles ', originally a sermon preached before the 
University, in my book called The Life of Christ in 
Recent Research, which was published in 1907, the 
second in a paper read at the Church Congress at 
Middlesbrough in 19 12. This period is my real transi- 
tion. By this time my mind was actively at work on 
the subject of Miracles; it was in movement all along, 
and was in process of coming to a decision. 

This is the record by which I would ask to be 
judged in the past, down to the end of 19 12. And 
for the rest, I would ask to be judged by what 
I am saying to-day. 



However, the main issue for which I have to answer 
is the decision come to at the end of 191 2 and the 
change to which I have committed myself since that 
date. 

It has been a question how I should best do this. 
I think I may do it in the clearest and most concise 
form, if I can succeed in stating certain axioms or 
general principles which I believe to have played the 
determining part in the decision to which I came. 

I shall probably do well to break up this section of 
my treatment into two parts, the first dealing with 
general considerations, the second with the particular 



64 ///. On the Nature of Miracle 

process which has led me to my conckisions. I shall 
be obliged to anticipate a little the results of Part II 
in Part I. But if you will grant me your indulgence 
so far as this, I shall hope to show that your indulgence 
has been justified. 



VI. A 

(i) I would express the first more general principle 
thus : Poetry comes before prose ; the earlier statements 
are usually more or less coloured by the imagination ; 
what we call * the plain fact, 7ieither more nor less I is 
tisually latest in order of time. I have to say * usually ' 
because the rule is not quite without exceptions. What 
it amounts to is that the aim at exactness of statement 
is a scientific aim and belongs to the scientific period, 
which is latest in the world's history. Sometimes, 
however, a similar result is obtained through simplicity 
and directness of object and the absence of distorting 
influences. In this way portions of ancient narrative, 
like the story of Abimelech in Judges ix, or the story 
of the rebellion of Absalom in 2 Samuel, attain to great 
perfection. But the general rule holds good, especially 
where there is a substantial interval of time between 
events and their committal to writing, that the narra- 
tive bears marks of considerable play of imagination ; 
it is anything but a direct reflection of the original 
occurrence. 

It is a paradox of Divine Providence that so much 
early history, whether secular or sacred, should be of 



On the Nature of Miracle 65 

this character. But the fact cannot be doubted ; and 
it must be taken as it is. 

(2) Our next axiom is that the true divine is not to be 
sought in the abnormal, though for long ages the tendency 
has been to think that it was. It was natural to suppose 
that command over nature was indicated by going 
counter to nature. But the end of this assumption 
really came with the Baconian aphorism : Natura no7i 
nisi parendo vincitrir, the laws of nature must be 
followed before they can be overcome. This is no 
doubt from the human point of view. But it is no 
less true in fact from the Divine point of view, although 
it will be in slightly different formulation. From the 
Divine point of view it will mean that God is consistent 
with Himself; that He respects His own laws; that 
they describe His permanent mode of action. 

It is no merely mechanical uniformity that I contend 
for. Those of my critics who have sought to saddle me 
with this have missed my real intention. I am quite 
aware that in the 'advance of science the leading 
conceptions of one age are not those of another. In 
the period at the head of which stood Newton the 
dominant science was Physics and the ruling conception 
was embodied in the laws of matter and motion. In 
the period at the head of which stands Darwin the 
dominant science is Biology and the typical conception 
is that of life and growth. The idea of law becomes 
subtler and more elusive ; but it remains law all the 
same. 

(3) Our third axiom is the counterpart of this last ; 

F 



66 IlL On the Nahire of Miracle 

viz. that t/ze trtie divine is really spi^ntttal ; it is seen in 
the presence of higher powers of the Spirit. The best 
representation we can have of a period dominated by 
this principle is the picture drawn for us of the ApostoHc 
Age. And still better than the external description of 
that age in the Acts of the Apostles is the internal 
presentation of its actual working given us in the body 
of the Apostolic Epistles. We can see there on an 
ample scale and at a high degree of intensity the free 
activities of the Holy Spirit, without being compelled 
to describe them in terms that imply anything really 
abnormal. 

(4) Putting together the effect of these three princi- 
ples, the practical result will be, not that we are called 
upon to discard the conception of Miracle, but that it is 
desirable to amend the conception, and to do this by 
correcting the definition of Miracle. 

It is quite true that in common parlance and in 
popular usage the word ' miracle ' is often used in such 
a sense as to imply real contradiction or violation of the 
accustomed order of nature. But this is no necessary 
part of the meaning of the word ; neither is it a necessary 
presupposition of the history that has come down to us, 

I would ask you to consider whether it is not possible 
to keep the idea of Miracle, but to eliminate from it the 
element of the ' abnormal '. I fully believe that there 
were miracles in the age of the Gospels and Acts, in 
the sense of ' wonderful works ' or ' mighty works '. But 
I do not think that they involve any real breach of the 
order of nature. 



On the Nature of Miracle 67 

VI. B 

I have added a paragraph, to complete the sense of 
what I had written. But this is really the point of 
which I spoke in my opening remarks where there 
occurred to me a modification of the way in which I was 
proposing to present my case. I am not sure that I 
need introduce it, or that it would be well for me to 
introduce it just yet. At the same time I am inclined 
to think that it might be a good thing if I were to 
suspend my argument at this point in order to make 
another correction, or fuller exposition, of the stand- 
point from which I am really speaking. 

I spoke a moment ago about eliminating the abnormal. 
You may ask me how I would define the abnormal. 
I should be glad if I could rather shift the responsibility 
for defining it from myself and say that I meant by 
* the abnormal ' that which would be taken as such or 
under ordinary circumstances disallowed by, or would 
cause serious difficulty to, an open-minded well-instructed 
man of science. It is really the scientific spirit that 
I wush to represent. But I wish to do so without posing 
in a character to which I have no rightful claim. I 
would rather leave men of science to speak for themselves 
than attempt or profess to speak for them. I do not 
disclaim the name of Modernist. The name describes 
justly what I aim at being. I aim at thinking the 
thoughts and speaking the language of my own day, 
and yet at the same time keeping all that is essential in 
the religion of the past. I fully believe that it is possible 

F 2 



68 UL On the Nature of Miracle 

to do this. If I did not think so I should not be 
here. 

That is my fundamental faith. But, before it can be 
made good, a certain amount of restatement is needed ; 
and that is what I am trying to supply, or to help to 
supply. In the process I reached a certain stage at the 
end of 191 2. 

(i) At that time I underwent one of those experiences 
which so often mark the steps in a mental career. A 
number of threads seem suddenly to come together and 
unite in a definite conclusion. Summarily stated, that 
conclusion took the form of a growing consciousness 
that Miracles could be explained. More fully and more 
accurately, I should put it in the form that the abnormal 
element in miracle could be explained without being 
taken as literal fact. 

In a case like this the suddenness seems to come 
from being able to survey a wide extent of ground in 
a process which has largely the effect of symbol or 
vision and yet which is capable of being analysed into its 
parts, and has to be so analysed if it is to be presented 
as proof or argument. A general principle running 
through the argument in this case was an estimate of 
the relation between the testimony and the things 
supposed to be attested. These fell into three classes 
according as they belonged (i) to secular history, (ii) 
to the Old Testament, (iii) to the New. 

In each of these cases the process of analysis had 
been at work. Reitzenstein published his treatise 
Hellenistische Wtmdererzdhlungen in 1 906 ; but it was 



On the Nature of Miracle 69 

more as dealing with a sort of literary curiosity than as 
a serious inquiry into historical truth. In that respect 
he was arguing towards a foregone conclusion. No 
one was prepared to defend the stories of pagan miracle 
as literal history. The inquiry was purely academic ; 
it had no bearing on practical affairs. 

It was otherwise with the Old Testament. But by 
this time the Old Testament had been closely studied 
as a series of literary and historical documents. The 
place of these documents and their relation to the 
events was approximately fixed. Here no doubt there 
were many stories of wonders. But the more carefully 
these stories were examined, the less it was felt that 
they could be worked into deliberate history, con- 
structed in accordance with modern standards. They 
presented an uneven surface. The documents that 
were fullest of marvels were remote in time from the 
events which they recorded. Those which were near 
in time to the events were more and more sober and 
unadorned. In the end it became clear that the Old 
Testament did not supply a single example that could 
establish the truth of an event really contrary to nature. 

The strongest language on this head has been used 
by some of those who are most strenuous in asserting 
the literal exactness of details of New Testament 
history. Various attempts have been made to erect 
barriers between the one region and the other ; in other 
words to show that the New Testament example stands, 
where the Old Testament example analogous to it, 
fails. I do not hesitate to say that not one of these 



yo ///. On the Nature of Miracle 

attempts has really succeeded. It is not so very 
difficult to show that the New Testament evidence in 
some particular case is appreciably better than that 
supplied by the Old Testament ; but it is never possible 
to show that it is so much better as to bear the weight 
thrown upon it. 

(2) In regard to the Old Testament, I would state 
my argument in two steps. If I may, I will state them 
first and illustrate them afterwards. 

(a) The Old Testament was the period during which 
the conception of Miracle with which we are concerned 
was formed. We have just seen that during this period 
a number of events came to be set down as specially 
divine and as proofs of divine action in the general 
sense, because they seemed to run counter to ordinary 
nature and therefore were held to show command and 
control over it. It was almost inevitable that this 
should be so. The men of that day did not possess the 
knowledge to determine what was really contrary to 
nature and what was not. Some things which seemed 
to them strange and (as it would now be said) ' super- 
normal ' really came within the regular course of nature. 
But, in this way, through natural misunderstandings and 
through the natural process of growth between the occur- 
rence of the events and the time at which they were 
committed to writing, a certain number of typical forms 
had arisen which had a sort of general recognition. 

(b) As a result of this, in the New Testament period, 
in religious circles, men had got into the way of 
expecting miracles, expecting the abnormal. ' Except 



On the Nature oj Miracle 71 

ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe.' In this 
too our Lord was evidently aware of the tendencies of 
His time, and was on His guard against them. He 
uttered His warning ; but the warning was not heeded. 
The tendency was at work which it expressed. Men 
thought that they were doing honour to deity. The 
wish fathered the thought. They read back into the 
events features which seemed to them appropriate. 
Unconsciously or half-consciously, they heightened the 
touches which appeared to them to be supernatural. 

(c) I said that I would illustrate the process, and I 
will do so by three examples, all of which I think came 
home to me in the course of 191 2. 

The one that struck me most was a well-authenticated 
story told me by my doctor at Llandrindod in the 
summer of that year. It seemed to supply a close 
parallel to the story of Elisha, Naaman, and Gehazi. 
The modern incident was this. A patient, who was a 
good deal run down, went to consult his doctor. The 
doctor ordered him complete rest ; he was to go away 
at once for six months. In a few hours he was back at 
the doctor's again. He had been obliged to wind up his 
business affairs in a hurry. He went to see his partner 
with this object ; and the partner took the opportunity to 
break to him, what he had never suspected before, that 
he (the partner) had been behaving fraudulently for a 
long time, that the business was really bankrupt, and 
that he was a ruined man. The effect of the shock 
was, as I understood, that in his debilitated state of 
health he broke out into a sudden and violent attack of 



72 ///. On the Nature of Miracle 

eczema, or something of the kind. I suppose that an 
ancient, with his imperfect knowledge, might easily and 
naturally call this ' leprosy '. 

The second example is just a guess of my own, with 
reference to the story of the floating axe-head in 2 Kings 
vi. 1-7, which I may be stating wrongly. There are 
doubtless many here who will be able to correct me if 
I am. Or rather, I can avoid this risk by simply quoting 
from the article on the * Dead Sea ' by Professor Lucien 
Gautier in Encyclopaedia Biblica, vol. i, who writes : 

* Another feature of it is its great density, which 
arises from its salinity (the mean is i.i66). At a depth 
of 1,000 feet the solid matters contained in the water 
represent 2 7 per cent of the total weight. ... A bath 
in the Dead Sea at once proves its difference in density 
from other seas or from fresh-water lakes. Eggs float 
on it. The human body being lighter than the water, 
swimming becomes difficult, the head alone of the 
swimmer tending to sink.' 

These two examples are to illustrate the genesis of 
the belief in miracle or rather, more accurately, of the 
belief in a breach of the order of nature where really 
there was none. 

The third example shall illustrate the relation of a 
New Testament narrative to an Old Testament parallel. 
I will quote this as it stands. 

*And there came a man from Baalshalishah, and 
brought the man of God bread of the first-fruits, twenty 
loaves of barley, and fresh ears of corn in his sack. 
And he said. Give unto the people, that they may eat. 



On the Nature of Miracie 73 

And his servant said, What, should I set this before an 
hundred men ? But he said, Give the people, that they 
may eat ; for thus saith the Lord, They shall eat, and 
shall leave thereof So he set it before them, and they 
did eat, and left thereof, according to the word of the 
Lord; 1 

I would not say that this suggested the story, but 
the form at present taken by the story, or double story, 
of the Feeding of the Multitude in the Gospels. 

It has, I think, given rise to the suggestion, that the 
Incident of the man of Baalshallshah is very incon- 
spicuous in the place where It occurs and that it Is not 
likely to have been in the minds of any of the Synoptlsts. 

On the other hand I would urge that the scribes of 
our Lord's day knew their Bibles a good deal better 
than we do. What we think inconspicuous by no means 
escaped their notice. I also quite believe that the story 
of the Feeding had a real foundation in fact. I have 
suggested elsewhere that It arose out of a sacred meal, 
which I can well believe to have been an anticipation of 
the Eucharist. It is only the miraculous multiplication 
of the bread which I should regard as doubtful. 

It will have been observed that all three examples 
are taken from the little group of narratives about the 
prophet Elisha. I would not say that they gave rise 
to these stories directly but indirectly. I mean, that 
what they helped to construct was, not the particular 
story, but the type of miracle which found expression 
In the particular story. I would not say that the 
narrator had seen an axe-head floating in the Jordan 
^ 2 Kings iv. 42-44. 



74 ill' On the Nature of Miracle 

near the Dead Sea, but that he knew that some one 
had seen a heavy body floating where it might not be 
expected to float ; and in that way the type of miracle 
might have been created. 

In Hke manner, some of the greater descriptions of 
the supernatural probably arose out of events of which 
a tradition lingered. For instance the description of 
the giving of the Law from Mount Sinai is clearly 
based upon an active volcano and earthquake. There 
are many extinct volcanoes in the near neighbourhood 
of Palestine. We have a similar picture of one In 
Psalm xxix. Again, the passing of the Red Sea and 
the passing of the Jordan may well have been started 
originally by the observation of actual facts. 

I have mentioned one characteristic of the contem- 
poraries of our Lord — that they were close but rather 
mechanical students of their Bible. Another is that 
they were not accustomed to discriminate between 
moral or spiritual and material. They were accustomed 
to interpret events in as realistic and palpable a sense 
as possible. They very often could only conceive of 
them in this way ; and, where an Old Testament 
parallel presented itself, they were sure to do so. It 
was for this reason that they thought of our Lord's 
Ascension as a scene of literal levltation. They 
conceived of it after the manner of the taking up of 
Enoch and Elijah. 

In the third place. It was only natural that they 
should be drawn especially towards the beginning and 
the end of our Lord's life on earth. And I cannot be 



Oil the Nature of Miracle 75 

surprised that in these connexions there should have 
grown up a beHef in the Virgin Birth and in a literal 
bodily resuscitation. 

I have cut myself off by taking up so much of your 
time from the possibility of saying more about these 
subjects at present. It may be that, if I am granted 
the status and privileges of an Emeritus Professor, I 
may be able to say more some time in the future. For 
to-day I will only set down the rather sweeping 
generalization by which I was inclined to explain to 
myself the instances of miracle which seemed to involve 
real violation of the order of nature. I do not think 
that these instances are strictly historical. At the 
same time I do think that belief in them was encouraged 
by the fact that other miracles were strictly historical. 
A personality like that of our Lord, or in a lesser 
degree like those of St. Paul or St. Barnabas or 
St. Peter or St. John, worked miracles naturally and 
spontaneously. A conspicuous case would be that of 
those poor creatures who were thought to be possessed 
with demons. That calm, serene, penetrating yet 
sympathetic eye, fixed upon the troubled and agitated 
patient, brought healing with it. That is one example, 
and there were doubtless many more. But in the cases 
which we are compelled to reject, as at least not 
probable in the form in which they are recorded, I 
should be inclined to seek a solution under the general 
heading that the element of the abnormal came in, not 
so much in the facts as in the telling. 



76 ///. On the Nature of Miracle 

VII 

I have explained the course by which I have been 
led to the conclusions which I have adopted in regard 
to Miracle. But the time has come for me to explain 
further the extent to which I am prepared to modify 
those conclusions. I am quite prepared to think that 
I have stated my case too absolutely. We too are 
limited by the age we live in. With us too the recon- 
struction is an act of faith and not of knowledge. I do 
not doubt that I have too often said 'It is ' where 
I should have said * It may be '. There are what 
Browning called ' the outward shows of the world'. 
But we want to get through these at the spiritual 
meaning ; and any expression at which we may arrive 
for this must always be approximate. The present-day 
equivalent of New Testament language — the element 
of mutatis mtdandis as compared with our own time — 
cannot be something hard and fast. It must not be 
either too precise or too vague. It must not be too pre- 
cise, because it is always moving ; it is always adjusting 
itself as it goes on. It must not be too vague, because 
it must always keep up its continuity and identity. 

There is in this a principle of * live and let live '. 
The mistake that has been made in the past has been 
the attempt to define too closely the outward material 
picture, which is the husk or embodiment of truth and 
which must tend towards exaggeration or rigidity on 
the material side. It is better so perhaps than it would 
be to lose outline altogether ; and that is the justification 



On the Nature of Miracle 77 

of the continued use of the ancient creeds, that they 
give us substance and keep us from wandering. The 
corrective against pressing this too far is to remind 
ourselves that in the last resort it is conditioned by 
relativity and has in it something, which may be more 
and may be less, of the nature of symbol. 

VIII 

Now let me ask you : Does not this line of argument 
which I have been following point to a great recon- 
ciliation, a real reconciliation, a more complete and 
searching reconciliation than has ever been before 
between science and religion ? Must it not be immensely 
easier than it ever has been for the man of science to 
believe with all his heart and soul in Christianity ? Is 
not the last obstacle removed — if we can go to him and 
say to him, ' I do not ask you to accept anything really 
abnormal. We may take the world as it is. We may 
believe that it has been in the past as it is now in the 
present, and yet we may at the same time believe in 
this great spiritual system of Christianity. We may 
adopt as permanent and final the language that the 
Gospel according to the Hebrews used about our 
Lord : descendit fons omnis Spirittcs Sancti et requieuit 
super etcm'} 

Why should we not endorse this ? We may surely 
take it as compatible with a full and true Humanity. 
We know that there have been prophets and holy men 
in the past in whom there have been implanted what 
the ancients called 'seeds or germs of the Divine 



78 ///. On the Nature of Miracle 

Word \ May we not also believe that there was One 
in whom the fullness of that Word dwelt bodily ? 

IX 

That is really the end of my lecture. But, on this 
last occasion, I cannot resist the temptation to add 
what I may call two appendices, partly for my own 
satisfaction, to see if you are at all inclined to go with 
me in thinking that what I am going to put before you 
is really so important as it seems to me to be ; and 
partly for the subordinate purpose of illustrating my 
belief in what I have called the logic of opinion. 

In spite of Bolshevism and all the kindred phenomena 
all over the world, still I would make bold to say that 
Atheism and Agnosticism are dead or doomed to die. 
The decisive argument has gone against them, and it 
is only a question of time when and how it works 
itself out. 

I can perhaps state my case best as taking up those 
magnificent opening words of Bacon's Essay on 
Atheism : 

' I had rather beleeve all the Fables in the Legend, 
and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, then that this 
universall Frame, is without a Minde. And therefore, 
God never wrought Miracle, to convince Atheisme, 
because his Ordinary Works convince it. It is true, 
that a little Philosophy inclineth Mans Minde to 
Atheisme\ But depth in Philosophy, bringeth Mens 
Mindes about to Religion : For while the Minde of 
Man, looketh upon Second Causes Scattered, it may 
sometimes rest in them, and goe no further : But 



On flic Nature of Miracle 79 

when It beholdetb, the Chalne of them, Confederate 
and Linked together, it must needs file to Providence, 
and Deitie/ 

There was a critical moment in history, after the 
pubhcation of the Origin of Species, when people were 
beginning to draw their inferences as to the larger 
bearings of the problem. It seemed for the time as 
though final causes were banished. The proof seemed 
to have broken down that * this universal frame is [not] 
without a Mind '. But are final causes really banished ? 
Is there no purpose in the universe ? 

Surely we ought to know by this time whether there 
is or not. It should be a simple issue. For, you will 
please remember that the question is, not whether 
there is any particular purpose in the universe but 
whether there is any purpose in it at all. We can see 
what it has grown from, and what it has grown to. In 
my first lecture I emphasized the fact that at the 
present time the history of religion can be written in 
considerable detail for some five thousand years. 
Is not that long enough to tell whether there is any 
purpose at work in the universe or not ? Indeed 
I should have thought that we could go beyond 
the simple affirmation and say, not only that there is a 
purpose in the universe but that there is a religious 
purpose in it. The universe in any case is One; and 
in any case, when we take out this five-thousand years 
section, it is found to be instinct with purpose, closely 
articulated and concatenated, graduated upwards in an 
almost infinite series of degrees, following each other in 



8o ///. On the Nature of Miracle 

what is upon the whole an orderly sequence ; and, as is 
the way in evolution, pioneers have been thrown out to 
show in which direction the movement is tending. On 
the evidence before us, can we have any further doubt 
that the process as a whole has Mind and intention 
behind it ? In other words, is it too much to say that 
Atheism — reasoned Atheism— is dead ? 

X 

Perhaps the other point is only a subdivision of the 
last. But things are now on so vast a scale that sub- 
divisions too may be of no small importance. What 
was the most threatening feature in the tremendous 
war from which we have just emerged ? Was it not 
the claim of a single European nation to be in effect a law 
to itself, the judge without appeal of its own interests 
and bent upon making those interests prevail ? Did not 
that attitude strike at the very foundation of inter- 
national morality ? Did it not emphasize the fatal weak- 
ness that international law had no sanctions ? Did it 
not involve in the relations of states the negation of all 
right but the right of the stronger ? 

It is from this anarchy that we have been saved. 
And in any case we have been saved from it. Because, 
whatever promise there may be in the League of 
Nations and other international engagements, we are 
not dependent on these alone. I imagine that the 
great safeguard is that it has become clear in fact 
as well as in theory that never again in the intercourse 
of nations can the offenders against right count upon 



On the Nature of Miracle 8i 

impunity. That is what they have done hitherto. It 
will be another thing when every miscreant knows that 
punishment, individual punishment, may sooner or 
later overtake him. 

Despite all the complexities and all the perplexities 
that are taxing our statesmen, the most serious gaps in 
our international system are being removed. And 
it seems impossible that the future should not see a 
great step in advance. 



IV 

THE MEANING OF THE 
ATONEMENT 



G 2 



IV 

THE MEANING OF THE ATONEMENT 

' I delivered unto you first of all that which also I received 
how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.' — 
I Corinthians xv. 3.* 

In seeking to penetrate a little further into the idea 
of Atonement and of the Great Atonement as it is 
presented to us in the Bible, I think it may be well to 
start from a verse like this, which is a fixed point, 
a plain brief and definite statement of a fact not liable 
to any difference of interpretation. The First Epistle 
to the Corinthians was written in any case within a year 
or two of A.D. 54, or some five-and-twenty years after the 
Crucifixion. But the statement goes back some way 
earlier, in the first instance to the time when St. Paul 
first preached at Corinth — some four years before — and, 
behind that, to his first close intercourse with Christians 
soon after his conversion, which may have been less, 
and can hardly have been much more than five years 
after the Death of Christ. At that date he found a 
doctrine of Atonement commonly held and preached. 
So much is firm ground, a fixed landmark which cannot 
well be shaken. If we try to go back still further, we 
are left with a choice between two possibilities. Either 
the doctrine had arisen in that short space of about five 

^ A Sermon preached before the University of Oxford on February 1 6, 
1919. 



86 IV. Sermon on the 

years, or else we must cross the border backwards until 
we are brought within the lifetime of our Lord Himself 
and suppose that it had originated in some hint which 
had fallen from Him. 

It would take too long to give all the reasons — for 
they are many — which lead me to adopt this second 
alternative and to infer that the Early Church derived 
its belief in the atoning quality of the Death of Christ 
from Christ Himself, and that it had its roots in the 
consciousness that He was Himself called upon to play 
the part of the Suffering Servant of Jehovah described 
in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. There would 
seem to have been a triple strain in our Lord's conscious- 
ness of His Divine Mission, expressed in those three 
terms, theSon, the Messiah, the Servant of Jehovah. The 
consciousness that He was Himself called to play the 
part of the Servant of Jehovah comes to light first in 
the predictions of the Passion which are represented 
as beginning immediately after St. Peter s Confession 
at Caesarea Philippi. We might say perhaps that as 
our Lord's consciousness of Sonship received its seal in 
the vision which accompanied His Baptism, and as His 
consciousness of Messiahship found an echo in St. 
Peter's Confession, so also His consciousness of a call 
to assume the character of the Suffering Servant was 
confirmed by another vision, the vision that is known as 
the Transfiguration, when Moses and Elijah 'appeared 
in glory, and spake of his decease which he was about 
to accomplish at Jerusalem'.^ 

^ Luke ix. 31. 



Meaning oj the Atonement 87 

Now it Is well known that there are two texts In the 
Synoptic Gospels — and I believe two only — which 
suggest that our Lord thought of His own Death 
as atoning. The second, of which I shall not say more 
at present, is contained In the words which embody the 
institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper, ' This 
is my blood of the covenant which Is shed for many '} 
The other Is the verse which appears identically In 
Mark x. 45, Matthew xx. 28, ' The Son of man came 
not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to 
give his life a ransom for many.' I believe that this 
is one of the indications that our Lord had In His 
mind the thought of the Suffering Servant of Second 
Isaiah. You will not fail to observe that ' ministering ' 
or ' serving' is the proper function of the Servant ; and 
there are marked coincidences in the Greek of this 
passage with the Greek of Isaiah liii. 11, 12, which 
point to the sam.e conclusion. 

I 

This at once sends us back to the original of that 
w^onderful chapter and that wonderful group of 
prophecies relating to the Servant of Jehovah. Some 
difficulty has been caused by the apparent changes in 
the subject of the picture that is drawn for us. At one 
moment It Is clearly and expressly Israel as a nation ; ^ 
at another. It is not the nation as a whole but, as It 
would seem, the faithful few, the godly kernel of the 

^ Mark xiv. 24, Matt. xxvi. 28, cf. Luke xxii. 20 v. I. 
^ Isa. xli. 8, 9 ; xliv. i, 2, 21 ; xlv, 4 ; xlviii. 20. 



88 IV. Sermon on the 

nation, as contrasted with the 'blind and deaf who 
make up the main body (xlii. i8, 19); at a third, we 
are led to think rather of an individual leader or 
prophet (so perhaps especially in xlii. 1-3 and liii). 
Really the Servant is an ideal figure, which is capable 
of expansion or contraction, according to the particular 
object which the writer has specially before his mind. 
Sometimes he is thinking of an individual whose mission 
it is to convert or reconvert his own people ; sometimes 
of a group who act together and suffer together in the 
same cause ; and sometimes he generalizes yet more 
boldly and thinks of the whole nation in its ideal aspect 
as a missionary nation, which stands out as a witness for 
God among the peoples of the earth, a light to lighten 
the Gentiles. In this character it attains to the height 
of its mission especially through its sufferings. It is 
just as a broken, dispersed and exiled nation that it is 
able to do its work among the heathen most effectually. 
The writer certainly has this larger view before his 
mind. And yet, in a case like this, the concrete 
precedes the abstract. I have little doubt that the 
prophet's thought starts from what he had seen on the 
smaller scale and with his own eyes. This, I think, 
comes out especially in the first verses of ch. xlii and 
in ch. liii. The traits of character in these passages 
are so distinct that they read like the biography of an 
individual. The picture is indeed in each case filled in 
with luxuriant poetry : the bruised reed and the 
smoking flax ; the tender plant out of a dry ground ; 
the lamb that is led to the slaughter, and the sheep 



Meaning of the Ato)iemeni 89 

that before her shearers is dumb. Metaphors like these 
add touches of beauty. But the human interest is 
predominant all through. The Servant will 'not cry, nor 
lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street'. ' He 
was despised and rejected of men ; a man of sorrows 
and acquainted with grief.' ' He was wounded for our 
transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities : the 
chastisement of our peace was upon him ; and with his 
stripes we are healed.' However much we may feel 
that this is applicable to Israel as a people ; however 
much we may think of the nation acting as a scapegoat 
for other nations — that could be only by an effort of 
thought, starting from more immediate observation and 
experience. I imagine that the prophet must have 
seen some one close at hand whose life-history could 
be described in these terms. He ends by sacrificing 
life itself, and there would seem to have been special 
circumstances in his death. In some conspicuous way 
it was clear that he was dying for others, and he died 
unresisting and uncomplaining. At the same time he 
was mixed up with common malefactors, and made his 
grave among them. Yet he did not die in vain. He 
left some converts behind him, and a prospect of more. 
* He shall see his seed ' — his spiritual children ; ' he 
shall prolong his days ' — through this spiritual posterity ; 
*and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his 
hand '—he will feel that he is an instrument for carrying 
out God's purposes. In that he has his reward; he 
sees of the travail of his soul, and is satisfied. If he 
perishes, he perishes that others may live. 



90 IV. Sermon on the 

I must needs think that in this picture a corner 
is lifted of the curtain of darkness which hangs over the 
Babylonian Captivity. We know so little about the 
circumstances of that Captivity that it is difficult for us 
to fill in details by any process of conjecture. It is 
easier to understand how events on a small scale might 
reflect the course of history on a larger scale. The life- 
story of an individual might well be a kind of epitome 
of the history of nations. Among the nations too the 
same sort of tragedy was being enacted ; and Israel 
was the hero of the tragedy. It loses its national inde- 
pendence. It is broken up and carried away captive. 
It is despised and rejected among the heathen. It is 
trodden down and trampled under foot of men. And 
yet, in the moment of its deepest humiliation, when it 
seems to be breathing its very last breath — in that very 
moment it is winning its greatest triumph ; it is dying 
that others may live, and with such a life as they had 
never lived before. 

We know more about the internal condition of the 
Roman Empire than we do about the Babylonian. And 
if we wanted to translate the poetry of Second Isaiah 
into plain prose, we should not be very far from the 
mark if we were to adapt it to a description of the 
missionary labours of St. Paul. 

* Of the Jews hv^ times received I forty stripes 
save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I 
stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day 
have I been in the deep.' ^ 

^ 2 Cor. X. 24, 25 



Meaning of the Atonement 91 

St. Paul might have sat for the portrait of the 
Suffering Servant. His poor body must have been 
battered and scarred. We might well believe that of 
him too it was true in literal fact that ' his visage was 
so marred more than any man, and his form more than 
the sons of men '. With good right did he say that he 
bore about on his person the branding marks of the 
Lord Jesus.^ 

II 

It is comparatively easy to illustrate the Idea of the 
Suffering Servant from the career of St. Paul. The 
parallel would be even more complete with One who 
was greater even than St. Paul. That would be only 
what we should expect if there were truth in the view 
which I have already expressed that our Lord had deli- 
berately taken to Himself the prophecy of the Suffering 
Servant and deliberately modelled the latter part of 
His own life on earth upon it. It is another question 
what place the idea of Atonement holds in the teaching 
of St. Paul. His contribution to the idea is very in- 
dividual — perhaps the most individual contribution of 
all. It bears the stamp of a single mind, trained under 
peculiar conditions. We are never allowed to forget 
that St. Paul had been brought up at the feet of 
Gamaliel. We are not allowed to forget that he was 
'of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a 
Hebrew of Hebrews ; as touching the law, a Pharisee.' ^ 

1 Gal. vi. 17. 2 Phil. iii. 5. 



92 IV» Sermon on the 

He had been brought up intensively in the most 
characteristic learning of his nation ; and he had applied 
that learning with a very subtle, vigorous, and enter- 
prising mind. St. Paul stands out in history as perhaps 
the most intense personality that ever lived. His mind 
is always active in the highest degree ; and it works on 
lines to which he was accustomed, to which he seems to 
have been almost born, and which had been strengthened 
in him by education. And then, with the processes of 
reasoning thus determined, he fuses the result of his 
own personal experience — an experience rich, deep, and 
varied as we may well think had never before been the 
lot of any child of man. The personality and the 
experience together mark his astonishing greatness ; 
the training marks his limitations. We speak of 'limita- 
tions ' ; and such they really are. But we must always 
remember that they are the limitations of a very 
powerful mind. 

The whole St. Paul comes out in the body of theory 
which includes his doctrine of Atonement. It is part of 
another doctrine which is peculiarly his — the doctrine 
that we call that of Justification by Faith. It is hardly 
what we can expect to be in the fullest sense an article 
in everybody's creed. And yet it is a very great in- 
tellectual creation. It is built up out of that primary 
element of personal experience working upon and 
through the specially Jewish method of interpreting 
and applying the Old Testament scriptures. In a sense 
perhaps the method is not so peculiarly Jewish. We 
are all apt to be caught by the great texts of the Jewish 



Meaning of the Atonement 93 

Bible, and by one text at one time and another at 
another. Two such texts caught the attention of St. 
Paul. One was from the Book of Genesis, ' Abraham 
believed God — had faith in God — and it was counted 
unto him for righteousness '} And the other was from 
the Prophecy of Habakkuk : ' The just — or righteous 
man — shall live by his faith.' ^ The word in the prophet 
does not quite mean what St. Paul made it mean : it 
meant ' fidelity' or * faithfulness ' ; whereas St. Paul 
made it mean what he himself always understood by 
faith, 'the faith which made him a Christian'. Faith 
in both the Old Testament passages had a smaller 
meaning; but St. Paul filled it out to the utmost 
dimensions of his own rich and deep nature. It was 
that which brought him to Christ and that by which he 
had his hold on Christ, and through Christ on God. 
It was thus the bond of union between his human soul 
and the Divine. Now in both the two leading passages 
of which I have spoken ' righteousness ' was associated 
with ' faith'. Hence St. Paul, after his conversion, 
feeling himself carried away by this new order, also 
felt himself brought into a right relation to Christ and 
to God. In other words, he was righteous in Their 
sight. Apart from his actual record, apart from his 
progress in his Christian calling, the way was made 
clear before him ; the handwriting that was against him 
was blotted out ;^ his sins were forgiven. If we ask how 
this state of things had been brought about, the answer 
is, because a great Divine act has intervened. 

* Gen. XV. 6. ' Hab. ii. 4. ^ Col. ii. 14. 



94 I^' Sermon on the 

'Being justified freely by his grace through the 
redemption that is in Christ Jesus : whom God set forth 
to be a propitiation, through faith, by his blood, to shew 
his righteousness, . . . that he might himself be just, 
and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus/"^ 

' Redemption', 'propitiation', * by his blood ' : it is the 
language of sacrifice. As a rule St. Paul is sparing in 
the use of this language, which is more characteristic of 
the Epistle to the Hebrews. To that Epistle I nowturn. 

Ill 

But before I do so, I have a debt to discharge. I 
should explain that, through the kindness of Dr. Rashdall, 
I have had the privilege of seeing proofs of the earlier 
part of his forthcoming volume of Bampton Lechtres. 
To me they seem to show a very special power of state- 
ment, which I think reaches its height in the treatment 
of the Epistle to the Hebrews which is the point now 
before us. The section is worked out with considerable 
fullness, and when the book comes out should be read 
and studied as a whole. If I may be allowed to quote 
two paragraphs, they will not indeed do justice to the 
original, but I believe that they will give a clearer and 
more adequate impression than I could myself do at 
greater length. 

Let us first take the following as a broad external 
presentation of the main teaching of the Epistle in 
contrast to the method of St. Paul. Perhaps the opening 
words need to be qualified in view of the important 
passage just referred to. 

^ Rom. iii. 24-26. 



Meaning of the Atonement 95 

* The old sacrificial system never appears to have had 
much interest for St. Paul, though of course it was 
accepted as part of the law : in the Hebrews we hear 
little of the law except on its ritual and sacrificial side. 
And the writer exhibits this sacrificial system as 
orginally intended to be merely a transitory and visible 
type of the new and only effectual mode of reconciliation 
with God which Christianity provided. To carry out 
this purpose he had to represent the death of Christ as 
the true sacrifice which would secure the remission of 
sins, symbolized, but not really secured, by the ritual 
sacrifices of the old law. The old ritual, as he says, 
was a " parable referring to the time now present ". To 
develop the parallel, to emphasize the contrast, to show 
the infinite superiority of the one true sacrifice v/hich 
Christianity provided, he fairly revels in sacrificial 
language ; he makes the most of every detailed point 
both of outward similarity and of inward difference 
which he could discover between the old ritual and the 
one true sacrifice to which it pointed. As the sacrificial 
victims were slain without the camp, so Jesus suffered 
without the gate of Jerusalem. As the High-priest 
entered the holy of holies with blood not his own, so 
the great High-priest entered into heaven by the 
sacrifice of Himself. As the first covenant was not 
dedicated without blood, so the new covenant required 
the shedding of the Messiah's blood. And so on.' ^ 

And now let us turn to another paragraph which enters 
still more intimately into the mind of the writer and 
presents a yet finer characterization of it from the point 
of view of religious psychology. 

' It is difficult in reading this Epistle to say exactly 
where metaphor or symbol ends and spiritual reality 

1 Op. cit., p. 154. 



96 IV. Sermon on the 

begins. It represents a stage in the development of 
thought in which types, symbols, visible embodiments 
of invisible and spiritual realities, parallelisms between 
the past and the present, were things of no small im- 
portance. We may even say that there is a tendency 
almost to identify or to confuse the symbol with the 
thing symbolized. And that is because the symbol was 
often to him more than a symbol. The writer was full 
of the idea of mysterious spiritual influences exercised 
through the medium of visible things. Doubtless he 
believed in a mysterious necessity for the death of 
Christ which went beyond anything which he could 

articulately express.* ^ 

« 

At this point the argument takes a turn that is less 
directly to my purpose. But I think I shall have quoted 
enough to show the keen and subtle insight brought to 
bear on the inquiry. And in the section as a whole 
there is much more of the same quality, to which I 
would invite special attention when the volume appears. 

With this valuable help from without, I have done 
what I could to convey the idea of these three distinct 
groups of New Testament teaching. And now I must 
try rapidly to draw the threads together in an attempt to 
apply w^hat has been said to our own attitude of thought 
and feeling at the present day. It is much in my mind 
that the difficulties which beset this question of the 
Atonement are largely due to the prevalence of what 
I suspect is a mistaken method of approaching the 
greater problems of Theology in general. I cannot 
help thinking that our method of theological study in 
1 Ibid., p. 159 f. 



Meaning of the Atonement 97 

the past has been too predominantly dogmatic. We 
are still haunted by the old belief in the infallibility of 
scripture and by the method of authority in teaching. 
We are still too apt to interpret the Bible as if it were 
a code of law. as if the object to be sought were always 
of the nature of a legal definition — This thou shalt say, 
or This thou shalt do, and That thou shalt not do. 
This is what I call the dogmatic way of looking at 
things, which I venture to suggest is wrong. And 
then there is the further misfortune that, if we apply 
that method to the positive construction of our beliefs, 
it is only natural that we should apply the same method 
to the criticism of them : our constant attitude is one 
of affirming or denying, acceptance or rejection. This 
is what I venture to describe as a misfortune. 

Should we not be more ready to take what we find 
as we find it ? Should we not be content simply to 
dwell upon it — to follow naturally and without too much 
of criticism the processes of thought to which it gives 
expression ? 

That is just what we have been doing with reference 
to the idea of Atonement. We have studied it, in a 
brief and summary way, as it is embodied in the idea of 
the Servant of Jehovah, as it enters into St. Paul's 
doctrine of Justification by Faith, as it is worked up in 
the sacrificial teaching of the Epistle to the Hebrews. 
And now, let us ask ourselves what there is of deep 
reality in each of these three modes of conceiving of it 

(i) The figure of the Servant of Jehovah embodies 

the idea of vicarious suffering ; and some people shrink 

H 



98 IV. Sermon on the 

even from that. Why, the world is full of it ; and not 
only is the world full of it but it is one of the most 
precious things that the world contains. It might be 
said that there are two kinds of vicarious suffering, the 
heroic and the unheroic. We are impressed by the 
former, and we are not much impressed by the latter — 
just because it is so common, and a great deal of it never 
comes to light, or at least is not noticed if it does. But 
let us think a moment. The son or the daughter — 
more often I suppose the daughter — devoting and 
sacrificing his or her life to an exacting parent. Or, it 
may quite well be the other way on, an affectionate and 
unselfish parent, devoting his life or her life to an exact- 
ing child — are not such things as these all round us ? 
And are they not all the more precious because they 
are not noticed, because they are so often uncomplaining, 
and because the very sacrifice is often even quite uncon- 
scious ? 

And then there is the heroic kind. Surely the War 
has thrown a vivid light upon this. It is for such deeds 
that the Victoria Cross is given. We think of the 
Victoria Cross as the highest distinction that can be 
conferred or won. But there is one yet higher: at 
least the posthumous V.C. is a step higher than even 
the simple V.C, because the sacrifice has been of life 
itself These deeds have not escaped notice ; and to 
a certain extent they have had their reward, because 
we — the nation — pursue both the deed and the doer 
beyond the grave with undying and unbounded love 
and gratitude and reverence and admiration. That 



Meaning of the Atonement 99 

holds good of those who are known ; and how many 
hundreds and thousands and even tens of thousands 
there must be who are not known — where the Intention 
has been there all the same, and has only not come to 
the act, or not been observed, or lost in the crowd and 
forgotten. 

Surely all this is reality. It is implanted deep in the 
nature of things. It is not only reality but it is the 
very best of reality. It stands high in the scale of 
values — of ultimate and objective values — as they are 
in themselves and in the sight of God. 

(2) And then there is another kind of reality. Take 
the institution of Sacrifice in the earlier stages of the 
world's history. How widespread it was ; how almost 
universal. How instinctive it seems to have been as 
an expression of worship. Like so many of these 
primitive institutions, we may well believe that those 
by whom it was first invented would have been quite 
unable to explain what they meant by it ; and yet it was 
full of meaning — and that right meaning, instinctively 
right and praiseworthy intention. That large-hearted 
prophet who is known to us as Malachi takes a wide 
survey of the world of his day and sees it everywhere 
prevailing, and everywhere acceptable and accepted 
by God. 

*From the rising of the sun even unto the going 
down of the same my name is great among the Gentiles ; 
and in every place incense is offered unto my name, 
and a pure offering : for my name is great among the 
Gentiles, saith the Lord of hosts.' ^ 

^ Mai. i. II. 



loo IV, Sermon on the 

We may be sure that many an untutored heathen (as 
we call him) has stood at the altar with feelings at his 
heart in their essence very like our own. 

No doubt the rite of sacrifice was capable of being- 
corrupted. It was adjusted to an imperfect and pro- 
gressive state of things. In its earliest forms it was 
very often crude. But it was on so vast a scale that 
we must needs think of it as God's appointment. It is 
part of the great scheme of things which begins in 
mystery and runs up into mystery. x^nd from that 
time to this the idea and the practice have gone on 
being gradually refined and purified and adapted to 
higher and higher modes of living. They survive 
even to the present day. 

If we take the idea of sacrifice as a whole, it includes, 
in greater or less degree, all the features to which 
exception is taken : it includes vicariousness ; it includes 
propitiation ; it includes even expiation. But there is 
no harm in these ideas if we did not read it into them. 
Why do we so often put unworthy senses upon things, 
when we might put worthy senses upon them } 

I have already spoken of vicariousness. But, what 
of propitiation ? What is there wrong in seeking for 
the Divine favour? The Hebrews had a beautiful 
phrase : they spoke of ' making the face to shine ', and 
even of God making His own face to shine. What 
they meant was to bring over the face a smile of 
tenderness and love. 

There is doubtless truth in the ' gift-theory ' of 
sacrifice : but why should there not be ? We spoil it by 



Meaning of the Atonement loi 

imputing interested motives. But tliat is just our 
cynicism, and nothing else. Take a child, with its 
Christmas presents. A great amount of childish thought, 
and a great amount of genuine affection often goes to 
the making of those trivial offerings. They are made 
with the hope of winning that smile of which I have 
spoken. It is just love responding to love. The smile 
perhaps is all that is given in return, and it is not given 
because of the value of the offering, but in response to 
the motive which lies behind the offering. It is just one 
touch of human feeling aw^akening another. 

And in the same way with * expiation'. After all 
that too is only emphasized and intensified sorrow for 
sin, expressing itself in act. 

Broadly speaking, there are these two great realities, 
or fields of reality, which converge upon and culminate 
in the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

There has been something strangely perverse about 
the constructors of dogmatic systems. I will do them 
the justice to say that they have not been without 
excuse — especially upon the old method of using, or 
misusing, scripture. The Biblical writings, and in 
particular perhaps the writings of St. Paul, do contain 
hints that were capable of being developed and pressed 
in the way that they have been. But they were the 
wrong hints to make use of, and they were used in the 
wrong way. They were taken out of their context and 
carried to logical extremes for which they were not 
intended. 

Let me rather suggest, or commend, a different 



I02 IV, Sermon on the Meaning of the Atonement 

method, which is in fact no other than that which we have 
been hitherto applying. We have (so to speak) spread 
before us a wide expanse of BibHcal teaching. It is 
indeed only part of the whole ; and yet even so how 
rich and varied it is ! Whatever we have made it, the 
thought when it was first written down was living 
thought, and the development was natural development. 
Let us let our minds play over this. We shall spon- 
taneously and instinctively assimilate what we find we 
can assimilate, some points more and some points less. 
Those on which we find that we can dwell most freely 
will stand out as so many centres ox foci of reality from 
which our thoughts will shade away outwards and down- 
wards. And much that we cannot perhaps assimilate 
directly we shall assimilate to some extent indirectly, by 
entering with sympathetic interest into the processes of 
thought by which they were originally formed. In this 
way there will be over the whole surface a certain play 
as of light and shade. 

And the total effect will be a sort of sustained attitude 
and act of worship which will blend with the great 
Benedicite omnia opera, that immemorial and infinite 
chorus of praise which has been going on and rising up 
to heaven ever since the world began. 



INDEX 



Abimelech, story of, 64. 

Abnormal, 65, 67 fF., 75. 

Absalom, story of, 64. 

Adonis, 49. 

Adonis — Attis—OsiriSy 49. 

Adoration, 47 f. 

Akhnaton: see Ikhnaton. 

Akkad, Akkadian, 6. 

Amenhotep (Amenophis) IV, front- 
ispiece, 37 ff., 47 ff' ; s^^ ^^^o 
Ikhnaton, Akhnaton. 

Animal-worship, 34 ff. 

Animism, 35. 

Anthropomorphism, 35 f. 

Apologists (second-century), 16 f. 

Ashm-banipal, 6. 

Assyria, Assyrian, 6. 

Assyriologists, 19. 

Astronomy, 43. 

Atheism, 80. 

Aton, 37 ff., 40 f. 

Atonement, lY passim. 

Attestation, 68 ff. 

Augustine, St., 17. 

Avebury, Lord, 8. 

Baalshalishah, man of, 72. 
Babylonia, Babylonian, 6 f., 10, 43 ff. 
Bacon, Francis, 65, 72>. 
Baptism, 51. 
Bible, the, as revelation, 20 ff. 

„ „ as history of religion, 

21 ff. 
Biology, 65. 
Bochart, Samuel, 9. 
Breasted, Dr. James H., 7, 36. 
British Museum, 10. 
Browning, Robert, 33, 59. 
Bumey, Dr. C. F., 5, 45. 
Butler, Bishop, 29 ff. 

Cambridge University, 9. 
Cheyne, Dr. T. K., ?. 



Clarendon Press, 9. 
Classical Archaeology, 10. 
Comparative Religion, I passim, 31. 
Corinthians, First Ep. to, 86. 

Demons, 16, 75. 
Dogma, dogmatic, 97. 
Driver, Dr. S. R., 4 f., 8. 

Elisha, miracles of, 74. 

Egypt, Egyptian, 7 ff., 10, 36 ff. 

43, 49. 

Egyptologists, 19. 

Eucharist, ^y. 

Evolution, 31 ff. 
: „ (religious), vii, 21. 

j Expiation, 100 f. 
; Ezra and Nehemiah, 14 f. 

j Farnell, Dr. L. R., 10, 19. 

I Fetishism, 34. 

I Final causes, 79. 

\ Fourth Gospel, 61. 

I Fowler, W. Warde, 10, 19. 

i Frazer, Sir James G., 3 f., 7, 9 f.. 
19,49. 

Gardner, Dr. Percy, 10, 19. 
Gautier, Prof. Lucien, 72. 
Genesis, 21 ff. 
Gladstone, W. E., 29. 
Greece, 10. 



„ stele of, 6. 
Hebrews, Ep. to, 94-96. 
Hiigel, Baron Friedrich von, 61. 

Ikhnaton : see also Akhnaton, 37, 
Impunity in crime, 80 f. 
Isaiah, 11. 

„ Book of, 12 ff. 
Israel, 11 f. 

„ Prophets of, 11 f., 20. 



I04 



Index 



Jastrow, Dr. ^^lorris, Jr., 5, 44 ff. 
Justification by faith, 92 ff. 
Justin Martyr, 16. 

King, Dr. Leonard W., 5 ff., 10. 

Lang, Andrew, 8, 18. 
Logic, 57 f., 78. 

Adyoff (TTrepfjiaTtKO^, 1 6, yj f. 

Magic, 43, 50 f. 
Malachi, 13 f., 99. 
Method (inductive), 60. 
Micah, II. 
Miracle, 111 passim. 
Modernism, 67. 
Monotheism, $7, 48. 
Moses, 24. 
Muller, Prof. Max, 8 f., 19. 

Natural Religion, 15, II passim. 
Nature- worship, 36, 47 f. 
New Testament, 15, 69. 
Nippur, 5. 

Old Testament, 20 ff., 69. 
Origen, 17. 

Palermo stele, 7. 

Paul, St., 15, 90 f., 91-94, loi. 

Penitence, penitential, 46. 

Pennsylvania, University of, 5. 

Peter Martyr, 18. 

Physics, 65. 

Poebel, Dr. Amo, 5. 

Poetry and prose, 64. 

Prayer, 50. 

' Pre-established harmony', 52. 



Prophets, 20. 
Propitiation, 94, 100 f. 
Psalms, 13, 42. 

Rashdall, Dr. Hastings, 94 ff. 
Reality, 25, 97 ff. 
Relativity, yy. 
Resurrection, 51. 
Revelation, 20 f., II passim. 
„ (primitive), 30 f. 

Romans, Ep. to, 15, 17. 
Rome, 10. 

Sacred Books of the East, 9. 
Sacrifice, 94 ff., 99 ff. 

„ gift-theory of, 100 f. 
Science, 64, 67, yy. 
Selden, John, 34. 
Servant of Jehovah, the suffering, 

86-91. 
Skinner, Dr. James, 4. 
Smith, Prof. W. Robertson, 8f., 18. 
Social organization, 35. 
Spencer, Dr. John, 9, 
Spirit, spiritual, 59, 66, 74. 
Sumer, Sumerian, 6. 
Sun-worship, 37 ff, 47 f. 

Tammuz, 49. 

Theological study, 18 ff. 

Theology, method in, 96-102. 

Totemism, 34. 

Tylor, Sir E. B., 7 f., 10, 18. 

Vegetation, 49 ff. 

Vicarious suffering, 97 ff. ; see also 
Servant of Jehovah. 



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